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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Heathen72" data-source="post: 5122508" data-attributes="member: 7029">Well said, and I was thinking the same thing myself recently. Being the "best GM you can be" is like being the 'best husband you can be". Sure, people can give you advice about what worked in their marriages, and some of it will be good and bad, but ultimately it's all comes down to what works well for you and your wife! And what works for you might not work for another couple (so be careful when handing out the advice!)Yeah, but sometimes people make it seem like you have to be a huge pushover to be a husband! Generally, though, a marriage is a partnership where both members have their own passions, their own ideas, etc, and the marriage is made great by what both partners bring to it. Despite what some people think, a wife doesn't want a husband who just says "Yes, Dear" all the time* Not that I am any sort of marriage counsellor. I am just saying that the same goes for a gaming group. You don't have to utterly sacrifice yourself, your ideas and your passions to make a game for the players enjoyment alone. it's a partnership - you create the game together. I know that in my gaming group we developed what we considered a very good way to game. We even referred it to it as our 'style' of gaming' and to be honest I think we got a bit smug about how good we thought it was. Then we played with someone from another group who we thought of as a good player. He was was very much into staying in character with as little OOC chat as possible, and he found our style of play very frustrating.  We agreed with him that we would keep the game-talk in character as much as we could, but it never quite worked out that way - at least not to his satisfaction. The habits formed over years of gaming were very hard to break. Looking at our games through his eyes, we realised how meta-gamey parts of our gamestyle had become, and that although the decisions we made were very much character driven, we actually spent very little time discussing things in character. Having him there was a bit of an eye-opener. It was like we were doing the gaming equivalent of Wifeswap!While we learned a lot from the experience, and try to incorporate elements of our friend's ideas, we continue to play in much the same way as we did before, because we really enjoy it! However, we know now that ours is a somewhat idiosyncratic gaming style which is probably no better or worse than anyone else's. Except to say that we all have a great time together, so within our group, at least, we are all the best players, and the best GM's.Yes, this is generalisation. I acknowledge that there are indeed henpecked husbands out there. If you are one, I apologise.</blockquote>

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