Different philosophies concerning Rules Heavy and Rule Light RPGs.

[Faolyn]

Ok. Let's say I was in a similar situation. I follow your advice, and eventually push my players hard enough that they admit this thing I enjoy isn't something they enjoy. What then? Are you advocating that the GM should drop anything the players don't like all the time, even if the GM does? Only some of the time? How much and how often should the GM compromise their own enjoyment of the experience to keep the players happy in your opinion?

Don't "push" them. Just ask for their honest responses.

You can also find out why they don't like the thing. There's different levels of lack of enjoyment, after all, and different reasons for it. There's "don't particularly care for" and there's "actively hate." There's "don't like because I find it boring" and "don't like because I find it terrible." There's also "this would be better if you did more/less XYZ." You know, like your cleric's player wants more undead to turn and is bored when reduced to healbot. For that matter, it could be that your players aren't having fun because they don't realize all the things their character can do, and in this case, you can help them out.

It's possible that they may have problems towards something you don't care about. Maybe you put riddles and puzzles in your games because you feel that RPGs should have riddles and puzzles in them, not because you love coming up with them. If your players actively don't like solving riddles or puzzles, then you can stop including them, and that benefits you as much as them.

It's possible that they may actively hate something you've been including. Maybe you use spider monsters but a player is frightened of spiders, but didn't say anything because they didn't want people to look down on them for their phobia. Unless you're in the middle of the Invasion of the Spider Monsters campaign, it wouldn't hurt you to stop using spider monsters and it would make the other player feel safe. Heck, you could even just reskin the spider monsters you already statted up as, like, plant monsters with a vine attack instead of webbing. And if you were in the middle of Invasion of the Spider Monsters, then you can talk to the player about leaving for the remainder of it.

And as for the final question, the answer is, how much are you willing to compromise? How much would a compromise actually hurt you or cause you to have less fun? That's something only you can answer. But if your answer to that final question is "I don't want to compromise my enjoyment at all," then you may want to ask why you're engaged in a group activity in the first place.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Ok. Let's say I was in a similar situation. I follow your advice, and eventually push my players hard enough that they admit this thing I enjoy isn't something they enjoy. What then? Are you advocating that the GM should drop anything the players don't like all the time, even if the GM does? Only some of the time? How much and how often should the GM compromise their own enjoyment of the experience to keep the players happy in your opinion?

At least some of the time, yes. The alternative is that, in the end you're just running the game for yourself.

Basically, there are X number of people at that table, and the GM is only one of them. Maybe you can argue the GM should weight his own enjoyment slightly heavier than any other individual player in games where he's doing more work (but note that; he's not in every game) but I don't see any ethical grounds for weighting it more than all of them.

It doesn't seem an excessive ask to compromise there, and if it does I kind of don't know what to say.

(It may be possible that there's no useful compromise because the GM and one or more players want fundamentally different things, and as others have said, that probably means they shouldn't be in the same game. But at the very least the GM ought to be honest about what's going on. Otherwise he's kidding himself and lying to everyone else).

 

[Micah Sweet]

At least some of the time, yes. The alternative is that, in the end you're just running the game for yourself.

Basically, there are X number of people at that table, and the GM is only one of them. Maybe you can argue the GM should weight his own enjoyment slightly heavier than any other individual player in games where he's doing more work (but note that; he's not in every game) but I don't see any ethical grounds for weighting it more than all of them.

It doesn't seem an excessive ask to compromise there, and if it does I kind of don't know what to say.

(It may be possible that there's no useful compromise because the GM and one or more players want fundamentally different things, and as others have said, that probably means they shouldn't be in the same game. But at the very least the GM ought to be honest about what's going on. Otherwise he's kidding himself and lying to everyone else).

I think there should be some compromise on both sides. I rarely get to play exactly the way I want, but I make the best of it, and I'm sure my players feel the same (we do talk about it). That being said, I have never ran a game where I wasn't doing many times the work of any player, and my enjoyment of what I'm doing is a needed component for the game to function.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I think there should be some compromise on both sides. I rarely get to play exactly the way I want, but I make the best of it, and I'm sure my players feel the same (we do talk about it). That being said, I have never ran a game where I wasn't doing many times the work of any player, and my enjoyment of what I'm doing is a needed component for the game to function.

This is the way I see things. Compromise is fine. Most groups have done amount of compromise. But in a lot of these conversations I think we are also talking around the issue of a type of person: the perpetually unhappy player. Why people push back on these threads I think is concern about this kind of person who can come in and just constantly bog games down in conflict over style and how to approach system. There are perpetually unhappy GMs as well. But in my experience on both sides of the screen the more common scenario is everyone just wants to play but you have that one guy or girl who wants to muscle the group into doing things their way. So I just avoid playing with those types and I find when you do, the games are ten times smoother

 

[Bedrockgames]

At least some of the time, yes. The alternative is that, in the end you're just running the game for yourself.

Basically, there are X number of people at that table, and the GM is only one of them. Maybe you can argue the GM should weight his own enjoyment slightly heavier than any other individual player in games where he's doing more work (but note that; he's not in every game) but I don't see any ethical grounds for weighting it more than all of them.

It doesn't seem an excessive ask to compromise there, and if it does I kind of don't know what to say.

(It may be possible that there's no useful compromise because the GM and one or more players want fundamentally different things, and as others have said, that probably means they shouldn't be in the same game. But at the very least the GM ought to be honest about what's going on. Otherwise he's kidding himself and lying to everyone else).

part of the issue is we are speaking in very general terms, and all of us might be projecting different scenarios onto this kind of disagreement. Maybe if we used specific examples of the kinds of disagreements people had in mind it might be easier to gauge them

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think there should be some compromise on both sides. I rarely get to play exactly the way I want, but I make the best of it, and I'm sure my players feel the same (we do talk about it). That being said, I have never ran a game where I wasn't doing many times the work of any player, and my enjoyment of what I'm doing is a needed component for the game to function.

I don't disagree with the first part, but what that means is in the eye of the beholder.

And a factor that needs to be put in in the second is where the work is, itself, fun. If none of it is, I'm not sure someone should be doing that in the first place, and if some of it is, that part of it should not be factored into how much offset fun you have to have at the table.

 

[Thomas Shey]

part of the issue is we are speaking in very general terms, and all of us might be projecting different scenarios onto this kind of disagreement. Maybe if we used specific examples of the kinds of disagreements people had in mind it might be easier to gauge them

Note I have primarily been in this discussion because there's a common claim you see when suggesting what a given GM is doing that "My players are all fine with it". This is a--convenient--claim that when pressed on in real life I've found more than once was not really true; it was the GM was reading compliance as "fine with it" because he'd passively discouraged complaints.

I'm primarily suggesting that if people are reading lack of complaint as enthusiasm, they're reaching well past their available data, and bluntly, should not be doing that. "Its the way I want to run the game and I don't see signs there's much pushback" is, at least honest, where claiming support from lack of pushback is--something else.

In other words, I'm far less interested in the individual cases than how GMs are presenting their relationship with their gaming group and the latter's approval of what they do.

 

[Tarl]

The obvious thing is that rules light have less calculations then rules heavy. Personally I find that with VTT/software aid rules heavy can be very fast. PF2e on Foundry is a joy to play and run.

 

[aramis erak]

Ok. Let's say I was in a similar situation. I follow your advice, and eventually push my players hard enough that they admit this thing I enjoy isn't something they enjoy. What then? Are you advocating that the GM should drop anything the players don't like all the time, even if the GM does? Only some of the time? How much and how often should the GM compromise their own enjoyment of the experience to keep the players happy in your opinion?

If some element is not to the group's enjoyment, yes, dropping it in future is the correct thing to do. Anything else with that group is being an ass.

If that thing is key to your enjoyment of that game (setting or rules), then it's time to either find a different group or to play something else with the current one, something that lacks that as a key element for you.

My advice to players is to tell the GM when a session left them uncomfortable or disinterested in whole or part.

 

[Micah Sweet]

If some element is not to the group's enjoyment, yes, dropping it in future is the correct thing to do. Anything else with that group is being an ass.

If that thing is key to your enjoyment of that game (setting or rules), then it's time to either find a different group or to play something else with the current one, something that lacks that as a key element for you.

My advice to players is to tell the GM when a session left them uncomfortable or disinterested in whole or part.

Does that philosophy apply to the players as well? What if one player has a problem and everyone else likes it?