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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jmarso" data-source="post: 8430242" data-attributes="member: 7032066">This has been an interesting thread to read. Moreover, it's pretty clear who the long-term / experienced DMs are, and who have little to no experience at the time / effort it takes to DM a good game. I'm going to post a couple of thoughts on the whole thing:Leadership (or diplomacy, if you prefer) is, in part,  the art of convincing other people to do what you want / need, and making them think it was their own idea. As a DM this is something I try to embrace. As a player, I don't like to be 'forced' down a path either, even though I understand it's 'the story arc.' A really artful DM can plant a plot hook and bait it so the players want to follow it. Do I claim 100% success with this approach? No, but at times, yes. The flip side of this coin is the 'contrary' player whose enjoyment in the game derives in spoiling / disregarding, or DERAILING(!!) all the preparation the DM has put in beforehand. Frankly, my toleration for this is pretty low. I was fortunate in that up to a couple of years ago, all of my experience with TTRPG's has been in the company of family and friends, which creates a different social dynamic for a game. (I've been playing since 6th grade in 1979) After all, you do other things with your friends and family, and the gaming table isn't your sole focus of association with them. For that reason, problems and problem-play can more easily be addressed and corrected, and to an extent, you can see (and sometimes even participate in) the effort it takes when someone you know / associate with other than at the game table is expending large amounts of effort in adventure / world building. In the most recent campaign that I ran, I put in over 40 hours of prep time for what was going to amount to about 12-16 hours of play time (about 4-5 sessions)- part of the reason it was so extensive was that it was an urban adventure (requested by the players after a few sessions of dungeon crawling) with a ton of interconnected but separate plots / mini-adventures, specifically to give them some of that 'sand boxing' feel, even though the whole thing was set in and around a single city, and was therefore in-and-of-itself a form of 'railroad', right? For players who have never run a game, stop and think about that for a moment about what would happen if they all showed up and said 'F that. We're going to leave the city and head back to the forest. And by the way, you suck as a DM.' That's the sort of thing that sends DM's looking for new players, or to say 'screw it' and move to the players' side of the screen permanently. I'm just sayin'. Since I've started also playing with 'strangers', for lack of a better word, I have to say that I've run across a couple of really weird / d-bag / entitled players- the sort I wouldn't want in a game I was running, much less over at my house. I honestly have to say that I've seen some of that attitude expressed in this thread. These folks tend to have one overriding trait in common: they've never run a game themselves. Although not everyone is necessarily 'suited' for it, I believe it would make everyone who plays the game grow as a player to DM a game at least once, even if it's just a one-shot. I know being an almost life-long DM has made me a better player as well- I'm better at picking up subtle hints being thrown our way, and I understand that we don't have to spend 20 minutes on every door because the DM isn't out to 'save or die' us every three minutes- stuff like that. Also, I don't get offended by a little bit of 'railroading', the way some people do, as long as it's well-handled. I get that it's to move the story along and make the game better and more fun, not to trample on my 'rights' as a player. Anyway.</blockquote>

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