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Message: <blockquote data-quote="firesnakearies" data-source="post: 5186644" data-attributes="member: 71334">Hey, cool thread idea, weem.Here's my personal grading:ARefereeing, Encounter Building, Running Tactical Combats, Humor, Trustworthiness, Flexibility, Fairness, Rules Mastery, Rewards, EgolessnessI run a tight ship and I'm a rock-solid arbiter of the mechanics and systems of the game.  I know the rules well, I create interesting, unique, and highly challenging tactical encounters, and I'm fair and impartial.  I use the monsters and terrain to their fullest, I make my players earn their victories.  But I don't try to quash them, neither their creativity nor their own mastery of the game.  I'm not an adversarial DM, I don't get upset when my players win, in fact I am very much rooting for them.  I give out lots of incentives, both in-game and out-of-game, rewarding players for good play, tactics, strategies, role-playing, and adding to the game.  My players trust me to make good rulings, to craft awesome encounters, to not screw them over, and to be a skilled referee in general.  I'm also very funny, and fun-minded, and know when to bend the rules or make a joke to enhance the enjoyment of the table.BManaging the Game and Players, Out-of-Game "Rules" Creativity, Preparation, Effort, Investment, Performance, NPCs, Characterization, VoicesI am good at being in charge, setting up a campaign, organizing the group and directing the players.  I'm good at saying "this is how it's going to be" and convincing players that my ideas are good.  I come up with (or seek out and then apply) interesting house rules and optional metagame systems to layer onto the game.  I work very hard at my game, spending LOTS of time preparing, reading, writing, custom-designing monsters and settings and items and NPCs.  I roleplay the creatures and NPCs well, making them memorable characters, with effort put into the voice acting and into populating my world and my encounters with complex, three-dimensional characters that are more than just bags of hit points for the players to slay or static quest-givers with exclamation points over their heads.CIn-Game "Fluff" Creativity, World Building, Description, NarrationI'm not exactly rocking anyone's world with my amazing and innovative ideas when it comes to the in-game setting and story.  I don't often come up with crazy adventures or locations that no one's ever seen before.  I try to describe things and narrate events well, but I'm no authorial or oratorical genius.  I think that I might be slightly above average in this department most of the time, but not enough to warrant a "B" grade.  I feel that my stage-setting and "fluff" design is pretty middle-of-the-road, run of the mill sort of stuff.  Nothing that's going to make people go, "Whoa!"DPlot, Intrigue, Drama, Storytelling, Improvisation, Mood, Mystery, OrganizationWhen it comes to all of the clever, sophisticated "arthouse" techniques of crafting a compelling story and really drawing in the players emotionally, I'm not very good at all.  I don't have people crying at the table, or shivering with dread, or running home to write soulful in-character journals about this rich and nuanced tale that they're so immersed in.  I'm pretty boring and straightforward when it comes to the overall "plot" of my games.  I try to make it interesting, but I just don't have much in the way of the genius needed to weave complex intrigues and touching drama in my game stories.  I'm also rather disorganized.  I prepare a LOT, I work on tons of stuff, but it's pretty much all over the place, I don't manage my workspace or my information very efficiently.  I can't improvise well at ALL.  If I didn't think about it some beforehand, I'm probably going to be a bit lost, and come up with something stupid.FPacing, Understanding and Catering to Players' Desires, Sympathy, Facilitating Other Concepts of FunI run the game I want to run, and it's not always the kind of game that other people might want.  I don't do well at tailoring the gameplay style to particular players, or even grasping what it is that they might hope for from the game.  I suck at pacing, and hardly even know what it means.  I tend to view players' frustrations at failure or difficulty with pretty short shrift.  Try harder, play smarter, think outside the box, don't whine because I didn't spoonfeed you -- that tends to be my feeling about players having a hard time.  I'm very nice to my players outwardly, and like I said, I'm not adversarial, I want them to win.  But really, I don't have much empathy for them inside.  My game is fair, but it ain't easy, and I really don't consider going soft just because people are having trouble.  I try to always be the DM that I want to play under as a player myself.  That's my standard, and if other players don't like that style, I pretty much think of that as their problem, not something I should change.</blockquote>

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