The role of the GM

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Þorkell

I'd want to know what he was driving. Unless my brain is failing me he'd have to be driving slightly in excess of 200MPH to achieve that time.

100 miles/25 minutes = X miles/60 minutes
6000 miles/25 = X miles
240 = X

so that's 240 mph or about 384 kph.

[whswhs]

To finish my earlier comment (I had to leave in haste for an errand):

Over the past two decades I've GMed a lot more than I've played. Typically I GM two or three times a month and play once a month. I haven't always been able to play; nonetheless I've played in several campaigns that were sustained over multiple sessions. They've been of varying merit: one superb, one reliably good with high points, the others less than that.

In one campaign, I was playing the combat monster of a regional superteam, a teenage Hispanic girl with Spider-man like reflexes and incredible senses. The GM had set it up so that the original of superpowers (there was a single origin) was a mystery. So we had two sessions in a row where the other players—in particular, a woman who's his very close friend—spent a lot of time investigating, largely via Web searches and socializing with important people who knew things. My character did nothing at all in the first session; in the second, at the very end, the GM gave us a short fight scene to give her something to do, which wasn't all that challenging and was obviously not of any relevant to the storyline.

So I submitted a letter of resignation, saying that I had clearly misunderstood what sort of campaign this was and created a character who was unsuitable. I was perfectly ready to drop out and not game, rather than spend several hours a month being bored. (And, well, all that conspiratorial stuff wasn't what I was interested in playing.) The result was that they all said, Oh, no, no, we don't want that, let us change our focus!—but that wasn't what I was anticipating; I was anticipating going my way with no hard feelings.

(This guy isn't a terrible GM; the other two I've played with are better, I think, but he makes an honest effort and isn't abusive. He just lost sight of needing to come up with business for all his players—a mistake I've made myself, further in the past.)

[sjard]

Originally Posted by Þorkell

I'd want to know what he was driving. Unless my brain is failing me he'd have to be driving slightly in excess of 200MPH to achieve that time.

Part of it was the linear map distance on the map between those two locations (if I was looking at the right ones) appears to be only about 30 miles, not 100.

Edit: It also appears that dcarson is mistaking what was originally posted as a 100 minute trip as a 100 mile trip.

Original:

Originally Posted by tshiggins

I just looked in Google Maps and, FWIW, it's about 90-100 minutes from San Diego to Riverside.

[cbower]

Originally Posted by trooper6

Here are some quotes from The Burning Wheel:

I actually winced reading all that. If you don't trust your GM to be fair why play under them? No game system in and of itself can fix a bad GM.

[Disliker of the mary sue]

rule zero: The dm word is Law

0a: The player has a right to tell the DM **** you and leave.

[Boomerang]

I think the role of the GM is to run an entertaining game for both the GM and the players. The rules are there to make the GM's job easier, not protect the players. If a player is unhappy with how a game is run then they should address their issues with the GM directly and in a respectful manner or walk away as previous posters have stated.

I prefer to run a rules-lite version of GURPS and to make judgement calls to fill in the gaps where appropriate. I don't like complex rules, I am not a computer, I can't remember lots of rules so I would end up looking them up during play which isn't fun for anyone. One of the other GMs in our group is a walking rules encyclopaedia, his games have a lot more crunch than mine and I enjoy them immensely, but I can't run games like that. I know my limitations.

Being a GM is hard, I would much rather be a player.

[Stormcrow]

I've always found the difficulty of being a GM to be one of the appealing parts of being a GM.

[Nymdok]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

I've always found the difficulty of being a GM to be one of the appealing parts of being a GM.

I agree with this statement fully although my perspective on what parts of the exercise are most engaging and profitable in play. (i.e. in what arena should I meet that difficulty and try to improve)

I used to fuss excessively over world building with questions like

"How high should this mountain range be to be a serious cause of the rain shadow effect and thus the desert on the other side."

"How much River does a forest need to sustain its fauna?"

"How much clear cutting would you have to do in a forrest to build a temple to an evil god?"

and other such questions that, honestly, my players could not have cared less about. Thats when I realized that I was channeling my energies in the wrong direction.

I started REALLY watching my players PLAY the game and seeing what parts they were interested in.

For them, Combat was a HUGE draw and they loved the GURPS system for it so I 'Deep Dove' the math on combat balance.

The other draw was that they wanted truly 'novel' stories told. They wanted plots they could remember so that they could flesh out the stories that would be remembered fondly for sessions to come. I'm not a good enough writer to develop completely new stories, so I started to just try to make really interesting 'scenes' and 'subplots' and hoped that would be enough. It worked!

Thats when we started getting things like

The worst Lich EVAR.
The Outland Relief for Children fund.
The Snootiest Matre'D at the Malo Casino.

As a GM, it made me less of a 'modeler' and more of a writer. My players seemed to enjoys the games MUCH more when we STOPPED 'Sandboxing an Open World' and just sort of picked a plot, fleshed it out in a quasi linear matter and stuck to it beginning middle and end.

As always, YMMV,

Nymdok

[Þorkell]

Originally Posted by whswhs

100 miles/25 minutes = X miles/60 minutes
6000 miles/25 = X miles
240 = X

so that's 240 mph or about 384 kph.

That's Bugatti Veyron speeds, but I don't think it has the endurance.

[Disliker of the mary sue]

Admitely I know the gm position is a rather tricky position to be in. There is so many ways to screw it up and if you screw up the whole game falls apart. I been thinking of dming since that the only way I can convince anyone I know to play gurps...but there so much prepwork that needs to be done..