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Is the DM the most important person at the table
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<blockquote data-quote="prabe" data-source="post: 7923041" data-attributes="member: 7016699"><p>Not all barriers are artificial, though. If nothing else, there's a good case to be made that being a GM is more expensive than being a player, at least if the game's publishers follow the D&D model and publish a separate book for GMs. Sure, that's something like a business decision, and you'll see that as natural as you see any other business decision; you'll probably describe this as "systemic," which ... sure, but I"m not sure whether it needs to be addressed as a gatekeeping issue. There's something similar if you're trying to introduce the people at your table to a new game; chances you're the one who bought it (and there's probably a correlation between that and wanting to play/run it); if you're introducing a game you absolutely need to know the rules, and I'd say the probability that you know the rues better than the players approaches 1.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I'll admit that your hypothetical very smol dungeon wouldn't satisfy me as a player or a DM, but that doesn't mean I think a table that enjoys it is Doing It Wrong. My expectations for my game aren't any more relevant to your game than you allow them to be, really.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Both of the campaigns I'm running have pretty good tables, but even the excellent players there make mistakes.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Every time a player asks you "Can I [verb]?" they're asking a rules question. They're asking for your judgment. Judgment isn't necessarily hard, but I wouldn't necessarily call it easy, either. It's nice when the players know the rules for their own characters, but sometimes situations or odd unexpected interactions arise, and ti's good to have enough of a handle on the rules to be able to handle those.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Sure, and that's why there's been some discussion about homebrew adventures versus published. Some GMs have the time, energy, and inclination to make their own settings/adventures; others don't. It's another way of choosing your workload. It's absolutely within a GM's rights to take steps to reduce their workload.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I think GMing is different from playing, in ways that tend to make it more difficult (or at least more complex, which isn't exactly the same thing). The GM is, in many games, the final authority on the rules for that table, which implies an expectation to at least know the indices, if not the entire books. While the players are usually responsible for one character each (sometimes players run multiple characters), the GM is responsible for the world. Even in a published adventure, the GM needs to keep straight what is going on offstage, and know what a given NPC's motivations are, and where things are in the neighborhood and in the world. Some people will find the complexity more daunting than others, some will find it more difficult than others.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="prabe, post: 7923041, member: 7016699"] Not all barriers are artificial, though. If nothing else, there's a good case to be made that being a GM is more expensive than being a player, at least if the game's publishers follow the D&D model and publish a separate book for GMs. Sure, that's something like a business decision, and you'll see that as natural as you see any other business decision; you'll probably describe this as "systemic," which ... sure, but I"m not sure whether it needs to be addressed as a gatekeeping issue. There's something similar if you're trying to introduce the people at your table to a new game; chances you're the one who bought it (and there's probably a correlation between that and wanting to play/run it); if you're introducing a game you absolutely need to know the rules, and I'd say the probability that you know the rues better than the players approaches 1. I'll admit that your hypothetical very smol dungeon wouldn't satisfy me as a player or a DM, but that doesn't mean I think a table that enjoys it is Doing It Wrong. My expectations for my game aren't any more relevant to your game than you allow them to be, really. Both of the campaigns I'm running have pretty good tables, but even the excellent players there make mistakes. Every time a player asks you "Can I [verb]?" they're asking a rules question. They're asking for your judgment. Judgment isn't necessarily hard, but I wouldn't necessarily call it easy, either. It's nice when the players know the rules for their own characters, but sometimes situations or odd unexpected interactions arise, and ti's good to have enough of a handle on the rules to be able to handle those. Sure, and that's why there's been some discussion about homebrew adventures versus published. Some GMs have the time, energy, and inclination to make their own settings/adventures; others don't. It's another way of choosing your workload. It's absolutely within a GM's rights to take steps to reduce their workload. I think GMing is different from playing, in ways that tend to make it more difficult (or at least more complex, which isn't exactly the same thing). The GM is, in many games, the final authority on the rules for that table, which implies an expectation to at least know the indices, if not the entire books. While the players are usually responsible for one character each (sometimes players run multiple characters), the GM is responsible for the world. Even in a published adventure, the GM needs to keep straight what is going on offstage, and know what a given NPC's motivations are, and where things are in the neighborhood and in the world. Some people will find the complexity more daunting than others, some will find it more difficult than others. [/QUOTE]
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