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Message: <blockquote data-quote="payn" data-source="post: 9748016" data-attributes="member: 90374">Absolutely, the problem they slide into is thinking certain actions always have the same consequences. Which then promotes proactive behavior like murderhoboism.Agreed. What I ran into with a lot of old school GMs was the survival sim mentality. If players were not making optimal decisions, at all times, the consequences were bad. It was a way of "teaching" players to "git gud."This also slips into the combat is a failure state. I know thats controversial and not everyone's experience, but the survival sim minded GM leaned into it. The best solution avoided combat, or set combat up entirely one-sided in the PCs favor. Facing the monsters at a disadvantage was again, a failure to do the optimal thing. Reiterating the player learned behavior or get punished activity.Right, some of this thumb on scale GMing is actually against the skill play GM ethos. The philosophy isnt that a GM should curate an experience, so much as they should be an impartial arbiter of the game. Less game master and more referee. The GM is an architect of adventure design. Once they have finished design, at the table they are supposed to sit back and fairly allow the players to interact with it. Sometimes, that means very anti-dramatic results. Players cake walk through an encounter or adventure, or PCs get wrecked or TPK'd. Though, the lesson should be the GMs on being a better architect, though some of them decided placing their thumb on the scale would improve the experience, or at least head off the problematic sessions instead. Thus tainting the skill play experience.My modern GM viewpoint is that a good GM does both curate an adventure experience and run a fair game. A great GM is one who is good at both the architecture and the game mastery piece so that the experience is a good one as much of the time as possible. YMMV.</blockquote>

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