Recent content by Neonchameleon

And mine is that different games are different. MCing Apocalypse World is very different from GMing a PF2E Adventure Path is very different again from an old school dungeon crawl and each provides you with very different tools. Theory can't be comprehensive enough to cover all possibilities...

For the record I'm pretty sure the breakout game that did this was (as so often with modern gaming trends) 2010s Apocalypse World. Which called the GM the Master of Ceremonies, took away their dice, and gave procedures and agendas.

Honestly it needs more content. There's Hope & Fear due next year but I wish they#d publish faster.

The GM who fails to fulfill player needs plays solo. Serve is only appropriate for paid DMs.

Double

It's better to end early and leave everyone wanting more than to outstay your welcome. And D&D IME errs on the other side. You're going slightly faster than I am (one level every three sessions or so) but not a lot; my plan is to end at level 8 so they are in tier 4 but not max level. And I've...

If Force Points aren't meta because The Force is a thing in the universe then Fate Points aren't meta in a whole lot of settings because fate is a thing.

Key word "Little". Not "huge sim setting". Computers (certainly pre-Chat GPT) can not do the tighter conversational games adapting to PC actions. What they can do is the giant old school systems and worlds that are all mapped out in detail. I'm saying that it's a specific style that's fading...

On the other hand you have a lot of expertise with RPG stuff - and I'm guessing from your username that you're in your late 40s. You've sunk a lot of time into one and not the other. I do not believe this to be the case on the generation that was able to make their own worlds in Minecraft and...

And what I'm pointing out is that the level filled out more or less doesn't matter. The PCs are going to be always poking at roughly the same level (individual character level) and there is no way for the source material to present enough for that unless you use an extremely constrained...

The vast majority of people don't play tabletop RPGs. So yes. In my experience close to half of players are interested in GMing and how many of those potential GMs make at least occasional GMs is down to a wide range of factors. You don't need a majority or even a majority of potential players -...

Gygaxian GMing is not low prep by modern standards. But dungeons are openly artificial and constrained environments where the PCs options are limited, but any sort of weirdness is fine. They can even be generated procedurally by the 1e DMG. It's a lot easier to do entertainingly than anything...

Apocalypse World is canonically aimed at a dozen sessions from memory. It plays fast and hard. Most PbtA games are similar length. I tend to break PbtA games into "classic player character Vs enemy or environment" and "player characters Vs themselves". Monster of the Week is classic PvE. You...

This isn't quite a contradiction. Publishing is something you do instead of playing at the tabletop - and game design isn't world building. Here I'd say responsibility isn't sole responsibility. The group, the game, and the current GM all have varying amounts of responsibility - and the...

And if "I only GM because no one else wants to" that reflects either selfishness or failure. Selfishness because you are either through accident or design hoarding all the fun GMing, or failure to develop other people as GMs. It is however easier to develop GMs in systems where the GM is not...