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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 6005499" data-attributes="member: 2205">Even more than that; knowing your group isn't enough.  What may work one session may fall flat the next--even with the same group.I guess it's a little bit like the work that a stand-up comedian (or for that matter, a demagogue) has to do; you need to learn somehow to really be in tune to the reaction in the moment, and make course corrections immediately to accomodate those reactions.  To me, that's the difference between a GM who's maybe really quite good and who tends to run decently enjoyable games, and one who's great, and who manages to hit on all cylinders more often than not, and always manage to deliver great sessions.One GM that I've played with in more than one campaign, for instance, is a pretty good one.  And he even can spot these types of problems.  But, unfortunately, it seems not until after the fact.  To add to this, he runs only published modules, and mostly sticks to what's written with little in the way of true improvisation.  This means that while his campaigns overall are pretty enjoyable and I'm glad to be part of them when its his turn to run, any given session can bog down in a combat that is poorly balanced or executed, or in a dungeon exploration that's tedious and dull, or a puzzle that's frustrating and/or uninteresting.  And while he can sometimes tell that things aren't working, but usually too late, and his fixes are usually kind of ham-handed and clumsy, and there's a lot of metagame discussion about how poorly the scenario was written or balanced or whatever as well.Later in teh week after a session like this, he'll recognize what the problems were and assure us that he's on it, so it doesn't happen again.But if he were truly a great GM, he'd be more in tune with the "mood" at the table at the point when things are starting to go wrong, and come up with a mroe natural seeming fix to get things back on track before they become a frustrating issue in the first place.And I'm hardly claiming to be an expert at it, but I've been in games with GM's who were, and every session that they ever run--unless they're really tired, or off their game, or whatever, is just that much better than the sessions you get with even otherwise really quite good GMs.Like Umbran says, it's much more of an art than a science or even a craft, so unlike many aspects of running the game, it's really kind of hard to pin down how to learn to be good at it.  But the thought crossed my mind recently with the spate of recent style choices discussions I've been seeing lately.  Few of those style choices are always the right choice, even with the same group.  Because so much of what makes a particular session extraordinary is the mood at the table, and a great GM can manipulate that like... well, like I said--like a good stand-up comedian or a demagogue almost.</blockquote>

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