mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Over the years I have been GM for probably 90% of the games we've played.
While I enjoy playing I much prefer the GM roll.
While I enjoy playing I much prefer the GM roll.
Do GM's Play?
- Thread starter Supplement Four
- Start date
I have always noticed that wit the advent of the videogame the paper & pencil RPG for the younger crowd started to decline. There are still more games out there than before, but have you noticed that most of them are geared more towards the "Warcraft" style of wargame as RPG rather than pure imagination and character driven story RPG? It's as if the RPG trend is to try to be a miniatures version of a videogame. Even the MMORPG's online tend in this direction. People's attention spans are certainly dropping.
I remember being pretty proud of myself back in the 90's when I ran a Call of Cthulhu campaign to two straight years with the same core of 7-10 players every other Saturday night. Sometimes we'd go till the sun came up. Those were the days. I thought I was pretty good to be able to put together a multi-layered campaign that would keep that many reasonably intelligent adults (we were in our late 20's) that entertained for that long. Heck, sometimes I just ran completely off the cuff and let the players run with thier imaginations. Whole chapters would be tossed out in favor of better theories of what's really going on that the players would come up with as a guess. And to this day we still have a good time laughing about things that happened in that game (along with other ones).
Kids these days just don't know what they are missing.
Icosahedron
SOC-14 1K
Ee, when I were a lad we'd play fer hours in't street wi' nowt but a pair o clothes pegs an' a worn out clog...
Perhaps it's the lot of every generation to bemoan a lack of imagination in current youthful activity.
I play rarely and GM mostly. A great majority of my friends that GM are the same way. We just like it that way. We have occasionally played in one another's games, but as we get older, we have more demands on our time. At some point, we look at our schedules and have to make choices: if I can only do one game a week, would I rather GM or play? For the GMs I know, the answer is always GMing "for the win".
Mind you, I still play when I can, just to remind myself of what it is like to be a player, and that has influenced how I run games. But I'm always GMing something, be it a campaign or a series of One Shots for local game days and RPG meetups. It's just what I do...
With Regards,
Flynn
Mind you, I still play when I can, just to remind myself of what it is like to be a player, and that has influenced how I run games. But I'm always GMing something, be it a campaign or a series of One Shots for local game days and RPG meetups. It's just what I do...
With Regards,
Flynn
Ee, when I were a lad we'd play fer hours in't street wi' nowt but a pair o clothes pegs an' a worn out clog...
Perhaps it's the lot of every generation to bemoan a lack of imagination in current youthful activity.
No, by objective standards, ie, the same creative activities taught from the same plans, the kids do not create the same way.
Heck, even dancing. My 5th grade dances, we danced, just not with other people; probably 20 of 75 on the dance floor at a time. The one last night, that I chaperoned, the kids hardly danced at all, and what they did do looked like it would fit a DDR pad; also, only 2-4 kids danced at a time (of nearly 100), the rest preferring to watch.
Icosahedron
SOC-14 1K
I wasn't suggesting that it was purely subjective, just that intergenerational changes are nothing new. Change may or may not be accelerating, but the question of whether imagination is diminishing or merely changing direction between generations is gonna take this thread way off topic.
Icosahedron
SOC-14 1K
Yep, that sums up my situation pretty well.
Ee, when I were a lad we'd play fer hours in't street wi' nowt but a pair o clothes pegs an' a worn out clog...
Perhaps it's the lot of every generation to bemoan a lack of imagination in current youthful activity.
YOU HAD CLOTHESPINS!? There I was, shackled to the lathes at the nefarious Mr. Breakbone's factory in Cheapside...Night and day making wooden legs for retired Navy sailors...and my only friend was a large somewhat dirty splinter I wrapped in a bit of used tissue paper. While you rich kids lorded it over us with your stinking clothespins!
Oh Polly, she was a fine lady of a splinter until Mr. Breakbone spied her and exclaimed, "That's the ticket!"...then he snatched her up and used her to pick his overlarge blackened teeth. I swore, I swore he would rue the day that he despoiled my fair Polly!
Then one day we had our chance when one of his drunken lackies passed out on a lathe and his keys fell into my hands. I freed my fellow orphans and we broke out into the daylight after tarring and feather the perfiedious Bonebreak.
I GM of late mostly because there's no other game in my area. And I GM mostly at cons.
wordserpent
SOC-9
I'm a GM who "rarely plays" thought I do love to be a player as much as a referee. I am usually in the Ref's seat because I have all the ideas.
Perhaps there should be a middle-road option for this quiz as in:
"I play almost as much as I run the games."
W
Perhaps there should be a middle-road option for this quiz as in:
"I play almost as much as I run the games."
W
When I started rpging back in the late 80ties, I had the luck to find a group of players/GMers. They had alreay established a system of "one GM, one system/world". So, one was doing the Dragonlance Campaign, one was doing the Forgotten Realms (Yes, they were very into AD&D 
), and the people who thought themselves able were expected to GM too. So me and my friend ended up GMing Warhammer, and Traveller.
Of course there where the all player types too, but honestly I don't think they would have made good GMs anyway. And the GM/Players, as myself, enjoyed both parts of the hobby. The advantage is, as Gm is very draining on time and money, you can do more worlds/systems in a group with multiple GMs than you could with just one. The disadvantage is, you tend to GM the worlds you would like to play, in my case warhammer fantasy and Traveller
.
I now have the luck to be in a group with the same attitude, well at least 3 of us share the "burden" of Gming, with different systems, which unfortunately leaves me with GMing Warhammer and Traveller again, while playing chutulhu, Shadowrun and a french game named Eucumenè.
The funny thing is, I find GMs who play much more demanding. They know how a plot is made, some of them analyzing the way a GM usually makes his adventure and selecting their course of action accordingly.
We had stuff happening like: " Haha, the GM just made up the names and details of that NPC on the fly. Therefor the NPC can not be part of the plot. Forget what we are doing and lets try another approach."
Only-players don't do such stuff that much.
For Gming vs. playing: I enjoy both very much and wouldn't like to do just one thing.
), and the people who thought themselves able were expected to GM too. So me and my friend ended up GMing Warhammer, and Traveller. Of course there where the all player types too, but honestly I don't think they would have made good GMs anyway. And the GM/Players, as myself, enjoyed both parts of the hobby. The advantage is, as Gm is very draining on time and money, you can do more worlds/systems in a group with multiple GMs than you could with just one. The disadvantage is, you tend to GM the worlds you would like to play, in my case warhammer fantasy and Traveller
.I now have the luck to be in a group with the same attitude, well at least 3 of us share the "burden" of Gming, with different systems, which unfortunately leaves me with GMing Warhammer and Traveller again, while playing chutulhu, Shadowrun and a french game named Eucumenè.
The funny thing is, I find GMs who play much more demanding. They know how a plot is made, some of them analyzing the way a GM usually makes his adventure and selecting their course of action accordingly.
We had stuff happening like: " Haha, the GM just made up the names and details of that NPC on the fly. Therefor the NPC can not be part of the plot. Forget what we are doing and lets try another approach."
Only-players don't do such stuff that much.
For Gming vs. playing: I enjoy both very much and wouldn't like to do just one thing.
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