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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Helpful NPC Thom" data-source="post: 8427835" data-attributes="member: 7031378">The concept of authority gets a bad rap unless we're deferring it to credentialed "experts."EXPERTS SAY THAT...EXPERTS WEIGH IN ON...BAD THING TO HAPPEN, WARN EXPERTS, UNLESS...I'm Helpful NPC Thom, PhD. While you were out partying, I studied the DMG.Leadership requires authority, and the GM is leader of the D&D game.  You can't nominate someone GM and then whine that wields more power than the other players at the table. The GM has to hold more power than the players, otherwise he's not the GM. He's just another player character. There are roleplaying games in which the GM role doesn't exist. D&D is not one of them.Bad GMs abuse their authority. Good GMs do not. The authority granted to a GM makes abusing that authority more than some other games. One particular example is Burning Wheel, a game designed in an attempt to "solve" abusive GMing while still remaining a GM-led game. It has safeguards in place that D&D does not.Regardless, GMing is a skill just like any other, and honing that skill requires effort, patience, practice, and many, many mistakes made along the way. There are GMs I've played with who I won't play with again because they are poor GMs and have never improved their skills. There are GMs I've played with who are excellent and would jump at the chance to play in their games. And there are GMs like myself, who are halfway decent, who slowly improve over time.In the same way that the GM has to trust the players not to cheat, the players have to trust the GM not to abuse his authority.</blockquote>

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