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I think the problem is that things like taking a bath or other ‘realistic’ behavioural activities just don’t interest most people. And encouraging your players to be more ‘realistic’ is (usually) a bad idea. Your players are making the most tactically superior, mechanically satisfying or...

WFRP 4 kind of accounts for this through a pretty simple mechanic. After an adventure, you get to spend any treasure you may have accumulated (on equipment or what have you). Anything left over is gone by the time you start the next adventure. It’s assumed you spend it on booze, gambling, women...

There’s no end to the amount of material that could be produced for SW - but the issue is whether it would sell well. You only need so many supplements. SW getting less material would have happened regardless of Asmodee. An RPG can only sustain so-many books before the majority of fans are...

They’re one of the bigger 2nd Tier RPG companies right now. They tend to produce high quality big full colour hard backs. They usually (but not always) kickstart their core books. They certainly have marketing and distribution chops, but whether you see LotR in bookstores is more down to...

Yeah, I feel like they’re starting from a fundamentally flawed position: that there’s something wrong with the GM being the most important person at the table. The GM is generally the most important person at the table because they put in the most work at the game usually collapses without...

All of that is interesting, but none of it actually helps make my job as a GM easier. Entirely the opposite, in fact, it complicates it. It might be fun (if the players come up with good material), but it would be additional material I would have to integrate into my campaign. That’s not...

See, as a DM I would hate that. And as a player, I wouldn’t find it fun.

A player knowing the rules better than the DM isn’t the issue. It’s that a DM needs to have a higher familiarity with the rules than is required of a player. There is a far lower level of system mastery required of a 5ed player than 5ed DM. And a DM having more system mastery is more beneficial...

My own experience as both player and GM, combined with conversations I’ve had with other GMs and players, suggests to me that this is very much not the case. When I’m a player, I don’t need to know as much of the mechanics as when I GM. Nor do I need to know/think as much about the ‘shared...

Not really, no. In the example where the player ‘does more in session’ than the DM, the DM is still more important - it’s just that it’s possible the player would make a better DM.

It’s hard to learn on your own, but you don’t require a mentor to do it. Hell, it’s hard to do it with a mentor. But that doesn’t constitute gatekeeping. Something being hard isn’t gatekeeping.

A mentor is not required to be a GM. It just helps. There’s no gatekeeping. Nobody is going to stop someone new to gaming from being a GM. It’s just a lot easier if you have someone who can help.

No. Again, without the DM, there is no session for the player to be important in. And the authority ultimately always lies with the DM. You may have ‘surrendered’ your authority, but you can always take it back - ultimately the decision lies with you. If an individual player disagrees with that...

No, they weren’t. They helped push forward to the next scene, but without you there wouldn’t have been any scenes.

The player’s reactions are a lot less complex than that of the GM. The player only needs to account for their own character, the GM deals with everything other than the PCs. The player only needs to know enough rules to play their own character, the GM needs to have a good grounding in everything.

The question isn’t ‘how important is the DM in the greater scheme of things?’ It’s whether the DM is the most important player at the table, in the context of an RPG game. Yes, the author is important, because without him the book wouldn’t exist. The existence of other books doesn’t change that...

Y’know, when you explain it like that... still ridiculous.

The DM is even more important in those cases, as he has to be able to adapt on the fly. It requires a greater familiarity with the rules and setting than even the usual high standards expected of a DM, and an ability to apply that knowledge quickly and well.

The idea that a player is just a ‘passive consumer’ because he doesn’t want to run games is ridiculous. A player who ‘turns his brain off’ at the table is still contributing to the game. As for who is running those 5ed games: new DMs, just as there’s new players. With every new batch of gamers...

What you consider choices are what other people consider inherent elements of playing an RPG. If I take copious notes as a DM, it’s because I want/need those notes. Eliminating them from the game will reduce my enjoyment of the game, not make it easier. A lot of people play RPGs because the can...