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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 9614844" data-attributes="member: 6696971">While I think your usage of "player-DM" and some of your other descriptors are clearly meant as pejorative, I do want to say that, as someone who has never played these games, you've actually a fairly solid job of talking about these games in this thread.  Not perfect by any means (more on that below!), and a little incendiary, but solid enough to help further discussion and clarify some stuff.  So here is to you bloodtide of the internet:<img src="https://media0.giphy.com/media/8Iv5lqKwKsZ2g/200.gif" alt="Great Gatsby Movie GIF by Sony" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Now a quick clarification.  GMing Torchbearer (what the lead post was discussing and you were responding to, so let us go with TB) is nothing like being a "player DM."  While they are rather different than the Traditional or Classic model of GMing as a whole, you do have some overlap on that Venn Diagram, and you do have extremely significant inputs on play as a TB GM.  To wit:* You're either using TB's stock setting of Middarmark or you're coming up with your own in a procedural, principled manner just as you would devise a hex map and stock it with setting/game content.  You're talking "civilized" locales and their (fiction and mechanical) dynamics, distances between places (relevant for inter-Adventure site journeys or Toll if using that system), and Adventure sites (which folds in all the typical things a GM must resolve including the TB-specific things).* While Adventures have very specific, bounded instructions whether Short/Medium/Long (on # of Obstacles, on Obstacle ratings, on Camp site dynamics, et al), the GM devises them.* While the GM should be using either (i) Condition w/ Success or (ii) Twist in equal proportion when a player Test generates a Failure, (a) it is the GM's decision and (b) while the nature and number set of Twists are bounded by fictional positioning, there is still a lot of play for the GM here.* While players have a large amount of input on types of Conflict, stakes, and Compromise post-conflict, the GM has equally as much and, in some cases, more than the players.  This is a pretty significant component of play, but there is nuance here and breaking this down would be more than I have time for (and I would need to see some interest and investment from folks before I care to do so).* Like Twists, Town and Camp Event Tables and their results are bounded.  Nonetheless, there is some interpretation here giving GM's some (principled and constrained) "play."[HR][/HR]Net, a TB GM isn't even close to a "player-GM."  TB is by far the most difficult game I've ever run for players.  The attrition rate and the duress upon players is so profoundly is beyond Classic D&D (and I spent '84-99 overwhelmingly running dungeoncrawls and hexcrawls) that it is difficult to even contrast the two.  It is just that (a) TB is also an incredibly vital Story Now engine along with being a Gamist masterpiece and (b) the expression of agency and decision-space a TB player is managing is quite different from Classic D&D.</blockquote>

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