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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tuzenbach" data-source="post: 1735220" data-attributes="member: 16155">But if the players ARE happy, only a truly selfish DM would have to find reasons NOT to be happy. Being a DM involves a lot of personal sacrafice which ultimately should culminate in the players enjoying themselves. This should be the reward for the DM. S/he puts on a good show and the players are happy.Now if the players ARE happy but the DM isn't, then that DM has missed the point of DMing. It's not about taking a World and concepts and plotlines and shoving them down the throats of the players in some mad attempt to prove that you're the next Gygax/Monte Cook incarnation, but to make the players happy. You've got to be receptive to their wants and needs and to ignore that is just plain horrific. I'll lastly say this. If a DM's players are truly enjoying themselves yet the DM is not (due to "inappropriate" jokes, problems with the DM's concepts of "verisimilitude" not being whole-heartedly embraced by the players, alignment squabbles, meta-gaming, etc.), then that DM is in the wrong business. That DM is a control freak to end all control freaks and would be better suited directing theatre/films. That way, the participants won't really have a choice but to act in accordance with the DM's desires.Bottom line: If the players are happy but the DM is not, the DM has a helluva lot to learn.SIDE BAR: Not too long ago, myself and a few of my brothers were playing some 4-player Super Nintendo thing. Three of us were having tremendous loads of fun, despite the fact that we were all losing very badly to the fourth. The fourth, incidently, owned not only the gaming device, but the game and all four controllers as well. Everything was his and he was totally owning us in the virtual world, as well. The problem? He was completely and uttering miserable. It was almost as if he was upset that, despite the fact that he was beating all of us silly, we were all incredibly happy. Why? It made absolutely zero sense. Could it have been that we were all happy that this control-freak clown was even allowing us to play his game/system/controllers? Or perhaps he expected us to be extremely frustrated in that we were losing to him and could not comprehend a happiness-in-the-face-of-defeat attitude? Or perhaps he just WOULD NOT accept it? Were we "not playing right"? Who knows. It remains a mystery to this day. I guess the point is, games are for fun. And if everybody is having fun except one person, that person doesn't seem to realize that games are for fun and needs to stop playing until this realization becomes apparent.SIDE SIDE BAR: I've a friend who once informed me that some people "didn't play right" as a child. "What do you mean?", I asked. "Well, they'd take Star Wars guys or GI Joe guys and somehow combine them with Matchbox cars. It just wasn't right (the size differential, you see). Those kinds of people must have been really screwed up as children".Can we say "control freak"?</blockquote>

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