The GM's World, the Players' Campaign

[Micah Sweet]

I'm pretty sure we want more good GMs.

But what constitutes a good DM? Ask ten people, get ten different answers. One thing the game design doesn't need to do is force the DM to be just the kind the players want.

 

[pointofyou]

I imagine, however, that it does feel like the world exists entirely to cater to the players. If that's fun for your entire group, great! But your tone indicates yet another poster who assumes a bad DM that needs to be controlled. That attitude does not lead to more people wanting to be DMs.

I'm pretty sure you have the causality wrong here. My friend isn't writing up new portions of the world because he thinks we'll find them interesting. He's writing them up for his own reasons then putting things that lead the PCs there so he can run those new portions of the world. It is not so one-directional as you think.

My good friend is one of the best GMs I've gamed with in the more than 35 years I've been involved in the hobby. Several people who started gaming with him have gone on to run games. I do not think our group demonstrates the problems you think it does.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm pretty sure you have the causality wrong here. My friend isn't writing up new portions of the world because he thinks we'll find them interesting. He's writing them up for his own reasons then putting things that lead the PCs there so he can run those new portions of the world. It is not so one-directional as you think.

My good friend is one of the best GMs I've gamed with in the more than 35 years I've been involved in the hobby. Several people who started gaming with him have gone on to run games. I do not think our group demonstrates the problems you think it does.

Fair enough.

 

[pointofyou]

But what constitutes a good DM? Ask ten people, get ten different answers. One thing the game design doesn't need to do is force the DM to be just the kind the players want.

I think the most obvious way to judge a GM's quality is by the players continuing to come back. I think a somewhat less obvious way is by how many players go on to GM. I think an even less obvious way is by whether the players who go on to GM learn more what to do or more what not to do.

Maybe the game design can lead the GM to be the kind the players expect. Maybe the players reading the game should be able to sit at any table playing the game and know how the GM is going to operate.

 

[pemerton]

I'm sure a lot of it does. Doesn't still change the fact that you have better chance of coming up with good stuff if you take your time. This to me is so blatantly self evident for pretty much any facet of human endeavour that I find it utterly bizarre that we are even arguing about this.


Doesn't change anything.

I don't think it's self-evident at all that the average RPGer is more likely to come up with "good stuff" in respect of thematic weight by sitting down and writing, rather than interacting with their friends. And once we are talking about the production of a fiction via the form of RPGing (in which a GM presents scenes and handles most of the backstory, while one or more players declare actions for their PCs), I think your claim is even less self-evident.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think the most obvious way to judge a GM's quality is by the players continuing to come back. I think a somewhat less obvious way is by how many players go on to GM. I think an even less obvious way is by whether the players who go on to GM learn more what to do or more what not to do.

Maybe the game design can lead the GM to be the kind the players expect. Maybe the players reading the game should be able to sit at any table playing the game and know how the GM is going to operate.

Seems too restrictive to me, like every GM for any given game needs to basically behave the same.

You can gauge an individual GMs quality for a particular group of players by your metrics, but they say nothing about GMs and their quality in any sense beyond that.

 

[pemerton]

My problem with "just in time" setting development (good term for it, by the way) is that inevitably I'll contradict myself, often within the same session, as I won't remember what I said earlier.

OK.

Just in case it needed saying, I'm not you.

 

[Micah Sweet]

OK.

Just in case it needed saying, I'm not you.

Well, he did say "his problem".

 

[pointofyou]

Seems too restrictive to me, like every GM for any given game needs to basically behave the same.

You can an individual GMs quality for a particular group of players by your metrics, but they say nothing about GMs and their quality in any sense beyond that.

"Every GM basically behaves the same" for a given game doesn't seem like a bad thing to me. It'd mean that GMs would have to pick the games that best suited how they wanted to GM of course but that doesn't seem like a bad thing to me either.

The metrics I listed are the ones I'd look at more than anything else because I think they'd reflect quality more closely than anything else. As to what "constitutes" a good GM? I don't think there's a recipe or even a parts list but I think the things I'd look for are wanting to be good and wanting to get better and wanting the game to be what everyone at the table wants.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I don't think it's self-evident at all that the average RPGer is more likely to come up with "good stuff" in respect of thematic weight by sitting down and writing, rather than interacting with their friends. And once we are talking about the production of a fiction via the form of RPGing (in which a GM presents scenes and handles most of the backstory, while one or more players declare actions for their PCs), I think your claim is even less self-evident.

But thinking about things beforehand doesn't remove interacting with your friends part. That still happens. And we always prepare to game to some extent. We create the characters beforehand. We establish the themes of the campaign. We establish some backstory. The GM might think some NPCs and locations. Technically we don't need to do any of this, we could just improv everything. But most people, even you, tend to agree that doing this preparation is worth it. And I don't think more hurts. Sure, you hit diminishing returns at some point when it is just no longer worth the effort, but ultimately we're just quibbling about where that point lies.