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Some players feel constrained by minis and a map and others feel in the dark without them. There are a lot of factors including how visually oriented the participants are vs how well theatre of the mind play works for them. Myself, I'm visually oriented and theatre of the mind play doesn't...

Over the years I can't remember the number of games I was in as a player, some years ago at this point when roleplaying was less self-aware, where my announced personal goals and ambitions for my character never got any satisfying closure on these issues by the time they left play. A subjective...

#firstworldbuildingproblems I regret nothing.

Any RPG involves two somewhat-separate activities, the game itself, and the social event around the game, meeting up face to face or online, catching up with each other, and other activities and rituals that become associated with the game. How much people care about the game itself, or the...

I answered "yes", despite the fact I use a few houserules, because all rulesets of any size have mistakes and contradictions embedded in them. It's always necessary to use some judgement on the grey areas within the rules and decide how to adjudicate them. When does the number of judgements and...

When I'm starting out a new campaign I generally have a "Session 0" to hammer out a mutual understanding of what the game will and won't be about in general terms, and how the game is going to be run. This especially applies to new rulesets or editions which require some work to get to grips...

Thanks for your response. Every player I have met is a distinct individual with their own preferences. It isn't as simple as just good GMs and bad GMs, either, every GM has strengths and weaknesses. Some GMs just don't cater to player goals, or do so in a fitful fashion. Safe to say I still...

But your PC may never get to the country, or discover the barbarians have all been enslaved and dragged to hell or whatever. In a lot of games player goals are irrelevant to the GM and there's no guarantee you will get anywhere near your goal, especially if there's some problem with telling the...

I can think of many, many interests and goals that require DM help to achieve. IMO the set of such goals is significantly larger than the set of goals that don't require DM assistance. (Both being infinite, but DM-required goals are a bigger infinity). Settling for smaller, meaner goals is...

It still seems unfair to keep judging a different style of play by the criteria of another style of play. "Your orange isn't a good apple". If the players genuinely want to move from scene to scene, and pile all the decision making into the scenes, like in a play or movie, then the alternate...

One way to railroad people in a GM-driven game is to throw too many decisions at the players. You wear them out with lots of relatively meaningless decisions, like suspicious flagstones and incongruous npcs, and when they are tired you push them in the direction you desire by not giving them a...

Even with GM-driven games in the "weight" or "depth" of game settings, from heavily detailed worlds dripping with lore and consequences under every rock, to lightly sketched minimalist settings that get added detail only when PC action makes it necessary. IMO the sort of bottom-up world...

The vast majority of RPG games I have played in have been GM-driven games, and I have enjoyed or at least appreciated many of them. A few were consistently great, most had highs and lows, with varying proportions of high and low. IMO to get the best out of such games places some constraints on...

Good point re focus of play, that's a better way of putting it. IMO there are more potential distractions that might prevent a resolution satisfactory to the players in GM-focused play e.g. secret backstory, uncooperative plot deadlines etc

I don't understand the statement. In a game where this was important, it would be discussed until there was some understanding or the issue was dropped. Here, it's probably a distraction from the OP. I will revise my original statement quoted above from "guarantees" to "facilitates" ie...

Misprint on my part, and a fairly obvious one, Player rather than DM. In any case, thanks for pointing it out, I corrected the original post

From a player point of view one of the big differences I see between GM-driven games and player-driven games is that conventional GM-driven games tend to encourage risk management and mitigation (even if the players don't bother with them). IMO this is the high level agency that can be provided...

RPG groups with different goals are probably going to use different systems and mixes of technique to attempt to achieve them. The analogy I find useful here is that detailed gameworlds with heavy worldbuilding are in some ways analogous to accurate historical drama, historical recreations or...

Communication remains critical in a game. If one or more players are unhappy, that's not good for the game, no more than when the referee is unhappy. Suppressing dissent, cowing players, labeling unhappy players as "entitled" can all go wrong, if the underlying issues are ignored. Often unhappy...

I used to use lots of adventure modules, and still use parts of them. While it's possible to adapt and change such modules to some extent, at some point the cost of extensive changes exceeds the benefit of using the printed module. In all cases the players have specifically agreed to play...