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Message: <blockquote data-quote="John Morrow" data-source="post: 2020261" data-attributes="member: 27012">What's fun can vary substantially from player to player.  I've seen the elimination of game-ending consequences destroy a game just as surely as a TPK could have.  Sure.  But those catastrophes will never be game-ending and thus not really catastrophes.I think it has a great deal of value in and of itself.  In fact, the primary reason why I role-play is to have the in character experience of being someone else someplace else.  If that someone else or someplace else turns to cardboard because versimilitude has collapsed, I'm honestly left playing a boardgame.  And, no, the story aspect of role-playing doesn't interest me all that much.Frankly, that's how I feel about putting narrative concerns first and versimilitude last.  And the players, if they are paying attention to the game, can tell when the GM is manipulating events just as surely as they can recognize a Deus ex Machina in a poorly written story or movie.  Writer's Digest had an interesting article about coincidences in stories a few years ago.  The gist of the article was that readers will accept coincidences that complicate a plot but have very little tolerence for coincidences that save the characters from plot twists.  Used sparingly, it can work OK.  Used frequently, it becomes a cliche in the same class as the red shirt in Star Trek, another technique that works fine once or twice but became a cliche from overuse.What is or isn't a good GM will vary from group to group.  In fact there is another thread active right now that illustrates a what happens when the sensibilities of a GM are mismatched with the sensibilities of their players.  If one is not having fun playing the game anymore, then it's preferable to not play it.  There are at least two currently active threads (the one mentioned above and the one about the GM changing the character's personality on the player) that illustrate forms of this problem.  In my particular case, if the game world doesn't make sense in character, then the setting and character fall apart on me and continuing to play is just so much moving a counter around on a map and rolling dice.And that's emulating the Star Trek stories.  That's not the only way to run a game in the Star Trek universe.  The story and universe are different.If you haven't noticed, Deep Space Nine takes place in the Star Trek universe.  You can also take a look at GURPS Prime Directive for a different take.</blockquote>

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