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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Enrahim" data-source="post: 9678997" data-attributes="member: 7025577">Thank you so much for your reply! I am not sure if "stance" is a good word, but I think the concept I am grasping at here might be useful. I experience a very distinct mindset that I would label as adversarial when I am running a set piece battle in D&D to the best of my ability. Similarly I am very mindfull of neutrality when trying to make a decission regarding rules interpretation in a game where I have presented myself as acting as a "referee". I used these as examples as I think most are experiencing something similar. And while the "roles" of the one to run the bad guys, and the role of referee seem well recognized, I have not seen this mindset regarding how to relate to the player characters been talked as much about.For instance when preparing an adventure it seem most commonly accepted that you should seek some "balance", both preparing tough challenges (adversarily), but also prepare clues and rewards (benevolient) alongside a rich and flavorful world (neutral).The utility I could see is that I myself feel an attraction toward of feeling more on the "team" of the PCs, during play, and would be interested in if it might be possible to achieve this without overstepping in ways that compromise my duties as a GM. For one thing so far in the thread it seem like "minor GM-PCs" appear more commonly accepted than what I would have thought, which is enlightening.I still think the concept I am outlining is strongly different from the traditional concept of adversarial vs benefactory GM, hence I tried with the stance word to limit confusion. I am playing the opponents to the best of my ability in the tactical combat because I believe that the challenge provide a good experience for my players. That would be benevolent GMing with a adversarial "stance".Yes, playing a full blown GM-PC would be the "pinnacle" of benevolent GM "stance" in this context, but I called that out already in my original post as a known unacceptable thing, and hence outside the scope of what I was interested in talking about. The minor NPC friendly was called out as an option there, but in this context I was wondering what is good limitations. There has been good answers to that in the thread already, but I would certanly welcome more! I also really do not think playing NPCs are the only way a GM could take a more actively PC friendly mindset, ref the firefighting example.Yes, solo tools is a thing I also have been thinking about as a possible way to help with this. The interesting question with this approach is if it might be possible to retain some of the value of having a GM while using these tools, without going full blown GM-less? In particlar roles like keeper of secrets and enforcer of a consistent unified vision for the game stands out as roles that might be possible to maintain without the conflict of interest of playing both sides?And talking about "playing both sides" how is this issue not considered a big problem when the GM is doing session prep, but it seem like you posit it would be "dodgy" to do so during play?</blockquote>

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