GMs are an endangered species!

*Deleted by user*

lowkey13 said:

Players should buy the pizza.

DMs should kill the players.

Such is the circle of (gaming) life. You know ....

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But, dude.... if you kill the players, they can't bring you more pizza.

No, really. Even Necromancy won't help you - undead pizza delivery ain't a thing for a good reasons. Zombies shambling along will *not* get you pizza in 30 minutes or less, and their stank on it is worse than anchovies.

lowkey13 said:

Players should buy the pizza.

DMs should kill the players.

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OMG! No!!! You're supposed to kill the characters, not the players!

This is how we start another Satanic Panic...

I like this thread. Where is your newsletter and how do I subscribe?

Dming is the easiest thing in the world. You just need a room full of undiscerning man children who are starved for meaningful social interactions, a couple of books, and a nearly eidetic recall of every crappy movie you've ever seen at three in the morning on the student station when you should've been studying for finals. You don't even need to be able to afford snacks. Oh yeah, and maybe a few sets of dice.

What is going extinct is the social stigma attached to being said man children. How can we be out, if there is no inside? But these are naught but the ravings of an aging nerd who still rants on message boards at 5am local time. Soon I will transform into a Kafka-esque petty government bureaucrat so I can afford my mortgage and model paints. (Don't worry about my kid - grandma's loaded and my spawn's college fund is secured, assuming sea levels don't reach Wisconsin in the next 11 years).

Celebrim said:

Also seriously, you have to be really over the top to separate yourself from the sort of extreme points of view that are all too common at EnWorld. . .

Also seriously, despite the self-parody (?) of the original post, are you intending to start a more serious discussion, or should I just be going along with the joke?

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Fair enough. I must have a pretty good filter; I haven't noticed too many crazy posts lately. Or Umbran is doing a kick-ass job at moderating?

The OP (now) asks how you feel about the separation of GM and PC. Or should there even be a distinction? And then later, well, someone starts talking about killing players.

So, yeah, ENWorld thread

Tony Vargas said:

Not if the game that is hard to GM is D&D. Then they go through a cycle: the DM wanting to try something else, the group being unable to agree on what else to play, the DM burning out, someone else running something terrible for a short while until the DM (somewhat recovered) can't stand it anymore, and back to the DM running.

OTOH, sometimes the hard-to-GM aspect of the game is kinda the point. The GM runs the game the way he likes, and the players either toe the line, or get the old "if you don't like it /you/ run for a while!" That usually shut's 'em up...
… I mean, hypothetically.

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One good point: D&D is really the default RPG, to the extent that in some areas/groups, "game" equals D&D. Which means that in these areas, there must be a DM, and that DM must (more or less) use D&D's definitions of DM and PC. I think the DM role has evolved, if only a little. There used to be more rules that were exclusively in the DMG, no? Then they streamlined some tables and solidified the DC concept, which made the DM role more important, because it would be a little weird to have PCs setting their own DCs...

Your circle of GM-life seems pretty on-point to me.

carter_beatsthedevil said:

I like this thread. Where is your newsletter and how do I subscribe?

Dming is the easiest thing in the world. You just need a room full of undiscerning man children who are starved for meaningful social interactions, a couple of books, and a nearly eidetic recall of every crappy movie you've ever seen at three in the morning on the student station when you should've been studying for finals. You don't even need to be able to afford snacks. Oh yeah, and maybe a few sets of dice.

. . . (Don't worry about my kid - grandma's loaded and my spawn's college fund is secured, assuming sea levels don't reach Wisconsin in the next 11 years).

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Hey! We brought one out of the woodwork. Er, basement? Keep an eye on Lake Superior, Carter. She's a tricky one.

What I'm reading is that the GM/PC distinction doesn't matter, because GMing is so easy. Is that a fair induction?

DMMike said:

The OP (now) asks how you feel about the separation of GM and PC. Or should there even be a distinction?

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I'm going to go with the ever popular, "It depends." Back in the days of the early bronze age, our primitive forefathers believed there was only three reasons to play D&D. But now that we are more advanced, we know that there is not only dozens of reasons to play D&D, there are even some other RPGs out there.

The thing about the GM/PC divide is that it really supports some of the traditional reasons to play an RPG well. The drawback is someone has to be the GM, put in a ton of work, not even get to play the game, and then get bad mouthed on the internet for being a jerk because the DM wouldn't let his Gnome Paladin start with his dad's +5 Holy Avenger that he totally would have given to him when he came of age.

You can get by without a GM if you've got a group of amateur thespians that are just happy to tell a short story with a limited cast together, play for a couple of hours, then start a new story. It's to playing D&D, Call of Cthulhu, or any other trad game what 'Threes Company' is to 'Game of Thrones' or 'Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog' is to the Marvel Extended Universe. Or you can get by without a GM if you just want to pit yourself against randomized PvE, but then I sometimes wonder whether you wouldn't be better off playing a multiplayer cRPG. Or you can pretend you are getting by without a GM, but instead are just passing the DM hat around and hoping it all works out.

My general impression with GM-less games is that to get them to work, everyone involved has to be skilled enough to actually be able to run a game with a GM as the GM, and sort of needs to have a GM's perspective on what is fun.... you know, nigh unto masochistic suffering and a touch of sadism. But, at least you don't have to do 20 hours of prep.

I suspect if we were to be totally honest, none of the GM-less games really work. I mean, you can make them work, but if you counted every single weekly session of them worldwide, they'd probably not get out of the double digits. The problem is that not only are they obscure, and not only are they fringe even in the fringe hobby of table top roleplaying, and not only do they require a handful of uber-nerds or wanna be theater geeks, but they just don't sustain themselves for more than a dozen hours of play. So even if you do enjoy them, chances are your play time is about 10:1 in favor of something like D&D, and everyone is asking you to be the DM because they just saw a thing on EOnline about how some celebrity on the backside of his career plays D&D.

Ever popular 503 error.

DMMike said:

- Would you like to see a hard line between the GM role and the PC role?
- If not, where do you draw the line?

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My view on this is fairly traditional: The point of an RPG is to role-play, and in order for the players to stay in the character mindset, a GM needs to be there to handle the back-end (playing NPCs, and adjudicating uncertainty in action resolution).

DMMike said:

One good point: D&D is really the default RPG, to the extent that in some areas/groups, "game" equals D&D. Which means that in these areas, there must be a DM, and that DM must (more or less) use D&D's definitions of DM and PC. I think the DM role has evolved, if only a little. There used to be more rules that were exclusively in the DMG, no?

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Oh yeah. Back in 1e, remember, there were not only rules found only in the DMG, there were rules in the PH that were /contradicted/ by inner-mystery rules in the DMG, and DMG rules also contradicted eachother, at times.
Over the eds, rules have moved from the DMG to the PH. It peaked in 4e, when even magic items were in the PH!
5e has moved some of the rules (and mystery) back to the DMG, which is consistent with DM Empowerment.

Then they streamlined some tables and solidified the DC concept, which made the DM role more important, because it would be a little weird to have PCs setting their own DCs...

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Well, players could look up DCs in static tables, as long as you had comprehensive enough tables, anyway. For instance, in 3e, you could conveniently look up the chance of making an NPC 'Helpful' with a Diplomacy check - that worked fine.

Your circle of GM-life seems pretty on-point to me.

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Heh. voice of experience.

DMMike said:

The OP (now) asks how you feel about the separation of GM and PC. Or should there even be a distinction?

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Oh, the distinction if vital for what we generally think of as TTRPGs - D&D & it's myriad imitators and the more obscure fringes of the hobby that have moved on from those beginnings. DMs don't just make up the world & the adventure, or they could be replaced with a module. They don't just make decisions for monsters or they could be replaced with a flowchart. DM's provide rules interpretations and judgement calls without which even the most meticulously designed TTRPG system would grind to a halt pretty quickly.

D&D-ish boardgames, like Castle Ravenloft point to how you might sideline the DM, mostly. You'd have a pre-packaged adventure, players would crawl through it like a pick-your-path adventure, and monsters would be controlled by an odd PC out in each combat (that is there'd be a mechanism for nominating a de-facto temporary DM).
See? Wouldn't be too satisfying an RPG experience, would it?

DMMike said:

Fair enough. I must have a pretty good filter; I haven't noticed too many crazy posts lately. Or Umbran is doing a kick-ass job at moderating?

The OP (now) asks how you feel about the separation of GM and PC. Or should there even be a distinction? And then later, well, someone starts talking about killing players.

So, yeah, ENWorld thread


One good point: D&D is really the default RPG, to the extent that in some areas/groups, "game" equals D&D. Which means that in these areas, there must be a DM, and that DM must (more or less) use D&D's definitions of DM and PC. I think the DM role has evolved, if only a little. There used to be more rules that were exclusively in the DMG, no? Then they streamlined some tables and solidified the DC concept, which made the DM role more important, because it would be a little weird to have PCs setting their own DCs...

Your circle of GM-life seems pretty on-point to me.


Hey! We brought one out of the woodwork. Er, basement? Keep an eye on Lake Superior, Carter. She's a tricky one.

What I'm reading is that the GM/PC distinction doesn't matter, because GMing is so easy. Is that a fair induction?

Click to expand...

I only wish I had a relevant point. I thought someone said something about GM's becoming extinct. Or good GM's being rare. I'm not really sure at this point.

Superior they said never gives up her dead when the galles of November come early.