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<blockquote data-quote="The Shaman" data-source="post: 5312922" data-attributes="member: 26473">This poll is seriously skewed.First, I checked &quot;very few,&quot; because very few of the referees with whom I've played over the years were &quot;bad&quot; (more on that choice of words in a moment). That doesn't mean that most of the referees were &quot;great,&quot; however. Most contributed to a fun game, in conjunction with the players (more on that in a moment, too), but only a few stand out as truly exceptional.Second, &quot;good&quot; and &quot;bad&quot; are so relative as to be meaningless. What we're really talking about is 'referees with whom I enjoyed gaming' and 'referees with whom I didn't.' And even that misses the myriad reasons why one might choose between the two. Did you dislike playing with a particular referee because he had hygiene issues, because he kept hitting on your girlfriend, because he railroaded the hell out of the players and their characters, because he was clueless about the rules, because his setting was boring?Third, everyone at the table contributes to the gaming experience, so my opinion of a particular game and group is shaped not just by the person behind the screen, but by the other players as well. I've played with some referees who were competent enough with the rules and ran plain-vanilla settings, but their games were a total blast because the other players were thirty-one flavors of cool.Fourth and last, in my humble opinion, if most of your experiences with something are bad, then the problem is often found not in the something but rather in the mirror.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="The Shaman, post: 5312922, member: 26473"] This poll is seriously skewed. First, I checked "very few," because very few of the referees with whom I've played over the years were "bad" (more on that choice of words in a moment). That doesn't mean that most of the referees were "great," however. Most contributed to a fun game, in conjunction with the players (more on [I]that[/I] in a moment, too), but only a few stand out as truly exceptional. Second, "good" and "bad" are so relative as to be meaningless. What we're really talking about is 'referees with whom I enjoyed gaming' and 'referees with whom I didn't.' And even that misses the myriad reasons why one might choose between the two. Did you dislike playing with a particular referee because he had hygiene issues, because he kept hitting on your girlfriend, because he railroaded the hell out of the players and their characters, because he was clueless about the rules, because his setting was boring? Third, everyone at the table contributes to the gaming experience, so my opinion of a particular game and group is shaped not just by the person behind the screen, but by the other players as well. I've played with some referees who were competent enough with the rules and ran plain-vanilla settings, but their games were a total blast because the other players were thirty-one flavors of cool. Fourth and last, in my humble opinion, if most of your experiences with something are bad, then the problem is often found not in the something but rather in the mirror. [/QUOTE]

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