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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7000241" data-attributes="member: 4937">As some one who is a DM most of the time, I confess I could care less about Real Men attitudes in general.  As the DM, it's my job to lose.  Good DM's are like Buzz Lightyear.  We may look like we are flying, but really we are just falling with style.  In our case though, it's not because we can't win.  It's because winning is trivial.  We have unlimited resources.  We not only have unlimited resources, we basically make up the rules.  Generating a TPK is trivial.  There is absolutely no fun for a DM in competing with the players.  I can enjoy their high fives when they think they've beaten me by being really cunning.  I have fun when the players have fun.   Part of that those is not telling them that I left the red self-destruct button in the scene for them to find on purpose.  It's sort of like Half-life II.  That clever plan that they came up with was actually just them solving the puzzle I intended for them to solve using the resources I provided them with.For a DM, there is no two axis about it.  DMs don't play on the Real Men's 'Powering Gaming' Axis that PrometheanVigil advocated so passionately about.  "Don't split the skills" is largely meaningless advice to the DM.  It's a discussion of how a group wants to approach solving problems and the sort of problems that they expect to face.  And I can give it to them, with mustard and a side of fries.  But it's not, save for the vicarious thrill of watching them have fun, how DMs have fun.   DMs have fun by jointly constructing a story.  And ultimately, if the players have no interest in that, then from the DMs perspective, they are pretty pathetic players.Much talk has been made in the RPG world about skillful DMing - and that's fully appropriate.   The GM is the most important person at the table.  Comparatively little talk has been made about being a skillful player, leaving players with the impression that all that matters is them having fun.As a DM, I have no problem with a mixed cast of RPers and "Real Men" (or Power Gamers if you will) at the table.  But there are skillful RPers, and skillful "Real Men", and by that I don't mean just system mastery.  I mean the ability to engage the whole of the game and assist everyone in having fun.  As a DM, I want - really sincerely and honestly want - at least some players with high system mastery and good tactical ability.  If you don't have anyone at the table with high system mastery and good tactical ability, it vastly reduces the sort of challenges and stories you can provide.  You have to handhold and babysit a lot, and you'll find stories being disrupted by lots of unnecessary deaths unless you just pamper the players and rubber stamp validate their actions - "Here's an XP participation trophy."  But, I could give a flying flip how much system mastery you have if you aren't using it to help everyone at the table have fun.   By all means save the freaking day with your awesome character and be the big darn hero.  But don't whine about how you have to pull that weight, while at (often in the same session) showing jealousy when someone else gets spotlight.  Compete with me to 'win' if that is what you enjoy, but don't take that to the extreme of trying to play the entire other side of the board or try to bully me into validating your actions because you are terrified of failure.  And for crying out loud, I don't care how much awesome you stuffed into your character with your vast system mastery, make him memorable.  If neither you nor I can even remember the character's name, I really don't care that he beat the encounter in one round with his One Punch awesomeness.  Make your character more than a sack of big numbers you pull out, and learn how to functionally role play in a way that everyone is entertained by - not as merely the IC version of your OOC bullying, as if the in game existed only for the metagame.  Because you know what I find invariably happens with players whose sole motivation is the illusion of beating me?  Pretty soon their motivation is beating the other players as well.</blockquote>

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