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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7656357" data-attributes="member: 4937">Just to clarify, when I talk about 'good play' and 'poor play', I don't want it to sound like I in fact have this all down and perfect.  Both as a GM and a player I make mistakes and fail to play the game up to the best levels I'm aware of.    The judgments I'm making regarding what is good play and what is poor play involve lessons learned from mistakes I've made, as well as observations made about how others play and what worked to make the game enjoyable.   Sometimes, indeed quite often, the lessons on what to avoid and the lessons on what to strive to achieve came from the very same player or GM.   One of the greatest lessons on preparation and improvisation came from playing as a player in a session where the DM was successfully seamlessly mixing both, and the joy and wonder attained by me as a player to find what I thought was pure color invented to handle an unusual proposition by me was actually well prepared clues to the main thought.   Staying ahead of the players is the ideal.  It is of course not always possible.  But I know from experience as a player and by what my players have said (and how they've shouted and cheered), that when the game is at the point that from the player's perspective it's all real and solid and durable and coming to life - even if you know its half seat of your pants - that at that time the GM is doing well.Likewise, much of my experience with players playing entirely at a metagame level comes not from dealing with headache players as a GM, but being in the same group with headache players as a player and forced to sit through long, painful, and some times embarrassing arguments with the GM, or players that repeatedly steam roll GMs so that you wonder why the GM just doesn't pass the hat to the player and let him run the game.  It's not fun for anyone, and certainly not fun compared to the joys you can have when everyone is actually playing together.   I know that in part because sometimes it is the same player who is a problem in session after session, who is capable of the most sublime and enabling play in other sessions when they aren't busy browbeating the GM.Hussar wants to make a contrast between speaking up and challenging the GM and passively consuming the GM's game.   For me, the biggest tragedy of drawing that contrast isn't just that it's wrong and unnecessary, but that it's entirely got the problem reversed.   Actually playing the game is the opposite of passive consumption of the game, but the most engaged you can possibly be in the game.  Challenging the GM about whether manticores ought to appear in a forest is absolute and complete failure to be engaged in the game.  You didn't just miss the bull's eye.   You missed the whole barn.</blockquote>

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