Scott, I think that assigning game designers perfect knowledge of what makes a game good is essentially assuming special knowledge. I've been GMing games for about eight years now and there were times where I was running upwards of three games a week in three different systems. Having seen the other side of the curtain as part of a commission recently, I can assure you that game designers of your average RPG have no idea what they are doing and have not as much as thought through the mathematical consequences of their rules or hashed out averages.
There are game designers that are good and have done that work. Unfortunately they tend to make games in very specific ways or with very narrow focuses, so when the players want a certain kind of game you have to grab the system that best appeals to that. Most players are not you and don't value the mechanics of the system above everything; my players come in and say they want to play around in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, so Dark Heresy comes out because that's what there is, even though that system is not optimal.
As a GM, I know why that system is sub-optimal, but I also know that my players want the trappings that come with it. So yes, I do fudge things. At the start of the game I tell everyone that, okay, this rule is not happening because it's broken and caused us misery last game. You could argue that I'm not playing Dark Heresy anymore and I've ruined the purity of the system or whatever the fuck, but I don't care. Roleplaying games are not a competitive test of skill. The rules are there to provide structure to the story and keep everyone grounded. In situations where the rules are hindering that goal rather than helping it, the rules can go into the fuck-off bin until we're running smoothly again.
There is no perfect system which encompasses all situations, settings and types of roleplaying, and it isn't easy to just port the rules of something you like to the setting of something you want to play because the rules influence the way games are played. If you try to use D&D rules to play a cyberpunk game, you quickly find yourself breaking down doors and stealing treasure, but you are beholden to your players sometimes and you need to find a way to make that shit work even when it's really stupid. Like, for example, fudging the rules in your D&D cyberpunk game so that their first attempt at breaking down doors and stealing treasure scares them into not doing that again for a while.
GMing is not an art form. Storytelling is an art form. Creating games is an art form. A GM is just a person in a game who must follow the instructions given by the game. Is being a referee an art form? No.
GM as referee is a type of play that exists. In the OD&D 1974, the idea of a Dungeon Master didn't exist. He was called a referee. But the term was invented because "referee" didn't cover the actual responsibilities of the person designing the setting, encounters, and npcs. The "referee" in a sport is not a player. He is not a part of the game. It's not supposed to be "fun" for the referee. A referee should not take an active role in deciding the outcome of the game, they should simply enforce the rules of the game. GMing does involve some amount of refereeing, usually, but it involves more than that.
GMing is absolutely an artform. You yourself said in the other thread that spawned this topic that GMing takes practice. If GMing was just refereeing, why would practice be a determining factor of success? Once you had all of the rules mastered, what would any additional practice offer? Someone with perfect memorization would be the ultimate GM, if what you say is true. :P
If you look around at the world of RPGs what do you see? Anywhere you go in the RPG community there are the same questions over and over again. I have X problem in my game, what do I do about it? How do I find players? How do I find a GM? How do I be a better GM? The people are asking these questions because their games suck balls.
If I go to places where people would ask advice because they need help, I'd find a lot of people that need help? Isn't that kinda like saying all cars are broken because I went to a mechanic and found a lot of them being fixed?
If you are using your own social skills to "win" in an rpg, you are being a dick. Referring to rule Ultimate, one should stop that.
Also, instead of "psudo-larp wankery" please use term "freeform" which is the commonly used term for "ruleless" gaming. Also as a larper I see noting bad in "larp-wankery".
Once again, roleplaying is full of tools like Rule 0, systems, freeforming and whatnot and none of them are absolutely right for every situation, group and game. They are tools and as any tools one should pick and choose right tools for them.
That sounds really nice, but ignores the point we have been making.
Extremeley few people are capable of choosing the right tools. If you were, you would be a game designer. Most people feel like a particular choice is going to make things better, but they are most often catastrophically wrong. What they thought would improve their game has made it worse.
Think about all the people who put money on Free Parking in Monopoly. They think it makes the game more fun, but all it really does is increase the influence of luck and vastly increase the play time.
If you buy a good RPG, one that is very popular and made by quality game designers, you are benefiting from a great deal of work that they have done. These people have already play tested their game extensively. At their gaming tables they have done all those rule modifications you speak of. They figured out through some science what rules created the most fun. They have tested those rules on multiple different groups of people and found those rules maximize fun and minimize problems among that wide variety of players.
Then when it came time to publish the game they wrote the already modified rules that have been thoroughly vetted and perfected over time. If you want to maximize fun at your table, your best bet is to learn by heart every single rule in your game of choice, and to follow those rules as precisely as possible with no modifications.
If you truly master every rule in the book, and have played many sessions this way, and you are not having fun, then the game is a bad game. Play a different game.
Also, instead of "psudo-larp wankery" please use term "freeform" which is the commonly used term for "ruleless" gaming.
No. Freeform roleplaying is a common and fine thing. This is pseudo-freeform. It's also closer to what happens in most larps. I chose my term carefully.
If you look around at the world of RPGs what do you see? Anywhere you go in the RPG community there are the same questions over and over again. I have X problem in my game, what do I do about it? How do I find players? How do I find a GM? How do I be a better GM? The people are asking these questions because their games suck balls.
If I go to places where people would ask advice because they need help, I'd find a lot of people that need help? Isn't that kinda like saying all cars are broken because I went to a mechanic and found a lot of them being fixed?
It's not a mechanic. It's every place role playing games are discussed the number one thing being discussed is problems. There are many things you could discuss in a community about role playing games, but why are the same handful of questions the most repeated discussions in every single one of those communities?
If you are using your own social skills to "win" in an rpg, you are being a dick. Referring to rule Ultimate, one should stop that.
It happens whether you want it to or not. Simply by being more socially apt, other people tend to go along with you. There's nothing that can be done about it on the social level: it's how humans work.
If you look around at the world of RPGs what do you see? Anywhere you go in the RPG community there are the same questions over and over again. I have X problem in my game, what do I do about it? How do I find players? How do I find a GM? How do I be a better GM? The people are asking these questions because their games suck balls.
If I go to places where people would ask advice because they need help, I'd find a lot of people that need help? Isn't that kinda like saying all cars are broken because I went to a mechanic and found a lot of them being fixed?
It's not a mechanic. It's every place role playing games are discussed the number one thing being discussed is problems. There are many things you could discuss in a community about role playing games, but why are the same handful of questions the most repeated discussions in every single one of those communities?
Because every single goddamn game is broken in it's own special way, some more obviously than others?
I disagree with Scott in that GMing can't be an art. Some games make it just that. But so many people have problems a the most basic level that such discussion is irrelevant. The "art" of GMing can't begin until mechanics are understood. You can't write an avant-garde symphony if you don't understand basic harmony.
Let me ask you this. All you people who are arguing against us. How are your RPGs going? Are they all totally awesome and perfect, or are they wrought with problems and strife?
I can tell you that we use to have all those typical oft-discussed problems. They went away when we started following rules. Even though we may play Burning Wheel or Inspectres, there are still problems. Those problems almost always arise because we do not know a rule, or we get a rule wrong. For example, one of Rym's characters was once severely mutilated in a situation that made no sense, and seemed unfair. It was because we did not know the rule of steel withdraw.
That's how the majority of games go. Rules fall aside (even simple ones) to overbearing players. It's the rule, not the exception.
I see the opposite much more often now. The most common (D&D specific) situation I see visiting other groups is a strict adherence to the rules as written, running specific set piece modules, following the guidelines to the letter. A lot of the shift has to do with the 4e meta, involving the character builder and encounter/monster design. I would agree with you in 2002, and possibly for a while afterwards as people shifted, but the most common dynamic is different - at least based on the gradual shift of all message-board conversations and my own anecdotal evidence from local groups and conventions. There is an attitude now that a strict adherence to the RAW is the law now. Yet the same people have the same problems.
As far as I can tell, your solution has been tried, and it has also failed. :P
Because every single goddamn game is broken in it's own special way, some more obviously than others?
No, read the actual questions and problems people have. The specific complaints. The specific problems.
The games themselves are the least of these players' problems. They're not even at the point of playing the games. They're stuck on such fundamental issues, issues that go largely unspoken of in popular rpg circles.
They're like drivers asking how to replace a distributor cap who don't understand what said distributor cap does or even if it is the cause of their problem.
Like children, these worldborn tabletop role players belie their questions, their very premises, with a clear and fundamental misunderstanding of the source of their problems.
They "want to play D&D." They don't think about what D&D is, or what it provides. They don't think about what the actual experience is that they want. The address symptoms of their problems, but never see the source.
The rules as written often suck. Sometimes they suck systematically. Sometimes they suck in a specific unusual situation that you managed to get yourself into because these games are super open and lots of bullshit can happen. (Um, can I parry while holding onto the ledge with both hands? Well, nothing in the rules says I can't...) The reasons we have GMs instead of referees is so that he can step in and figure that shit out with authority.
Because every single goddamn game is broken in it's own special way, some more obviously than others?
They "want to play D&D." They don't think about what D&D is, or what it provides. They don't think about what the actual experience is that they want. The address symptoms of their problems, but never see the source.
This is definitely true. The number of times I've dealt with this is staggering. That Cyberpunk D&D wasn't just an example; that is something I actually experienced when I was overruled by my players as to what system we would use back in high school. The number 1 problem is definitely people trying to fit a square playstyle in a round system, and there is no advice to give those people other than "stop doing that".
That's how the majority of games go. Rules fall aside (even simple ones) to overbearing players. It's the rule, not the exception.
I see the opposite much more often now. The most common (D&D specific) situation I see visiting other groups is a strict adherence to the rules as written, running specific set piece modules, following the guidelines to the letter. A lot of the shift has to do with the 4e meta, involving the character builder and encounter/monster design. I would agree with you in 2002, and possibly for a while afterwards as people shifted, but the most common dynamic is different - at least based on the gradual shift of all message-board conversations and my own anecdotal evidence from local groups and conventions. There is an attitude now that a strict adherence to the RAW is the law now. Yet the same people have the same problems.
As far as I can tell, your solution has been tried, and it has also failed. :P
If people are playing D&D to the letter, what is their problem? D&D is a game about having fun exploring dungeons, killing bad guys, and collecting treasure. If you follow the rules exactly, you will have fun doing those three things.
The rules as written often suck. Sometimes they suck systematically. Sometimes they suck in a specific unusual situation that you managed to get yourself into because these games are super open and lots of bullshit can happen. (Um, can I parry while holding onto the ledge with both hands? Well, nothing in the rules says I can't...) The reasons we have GMs instead of referees is so that he can step in and figure that shit out with authority.
If the rules as written suck then one or more of these is true.
1) Shitty game, don't play it. 2) There is a rule about parrying while holding onto a ledge with both hands, and you just don't know it. 3) Rules don't suck, you just don't know how good they are because you are a bad judge of what rules are good and what rules are bad.
It should also be pointed out that if you are a game designer, your goal is different than that of a GM.
First, you are trying to create the general game. The game for as many people as possible. This does not cover the nuances of every particular group that will play your game. This yields both a certain percentage of people that will inherently have problems because it's not the game they think it is, and that there are slight differences that would make the game better (more "fun") for a particular group.
Second, supposing you don't just build games out of love, you have a goal to sell product. This changes the metric by which you measure your success as a game designer. It's no-longer about selling the highest quality game, but about creating a suitably good game that will sell well and make you an income.
Certainly, despite those two, there are some great designers. Some of the ones I've met are certainly closer to the Scottworldian uber-designer than I am. But it's important to realize their circumstances.
A GM is only responsible for that table at that moment in time. The metric for measuring your success is how well the game itself went. It's closer to the customer.
If people are playing D&D to the letter, what is their problem? D&D is a game about having fun exploring dungeons, killing bad guys, and collecting treasure. If you follow the rules exactly, you will have fun doing those three things.
The question is, are they having fun? You say they will have fun, that doesn't mean they will have fun. And this depends slightly on the persons involved. First, is it fun to just "kill bad guys", "explore dungeons" and "collect treasure"? I could make a very simple game that just gives you those three things constantly. Clearly this is not sufficient in and of itself.
I would say the problem I'm most familiar with lately is people that character optimize and end up being able to walk over the designed-as-intended encounters to such a degree that there is only a trivial chance of failure. When you realize this, and see that the only thing pulling the game from point a to point b is a thin strand of story (from a series of fairly disconnected modules), and then see that even though your "character" and "story" are advancing, they're not actually any different than they were at first level because the game is well scaled numerically so the differences are all just numbers, the realization happens that they're just wasting their time doing the same thing over and over again. Break out your cellphone and play some angry birds then.
Also "If you follow the rules exactly, you will have fun." seems meme-worthy.
realization happens that they're just wasting their time doing the same thing over and over again. Break out your cellphone and play some angry birds then.
No, they play it forever because it fills a subconscious void. People will play repetitive games like this forever unless you break them out of the cycle. It even correlates directly with clinical depression.
Remember, most people playing tabletop RPGs aren't actually having fun most of the time. They don't know why they're not having fun, and they rationalize it.
realization happens that they're just wasting their time doing the same thing over and over again. Break out your cellphone and play some angry birds then.
No, they play it forever because it fills a subconscious void. People will play repetitive games like this forever unless you break them out of the cycle. It even correlates directly with clinical depression.
That does not disagree at all with my own experiences. :P
There are certainly plenty of Stockholm gaming groups out there.
As far as the question way up-thread about how my game is going:
Pretty awesome. I'm running a fairly modified version of the Pathfinder Kingmaker adventure path, which is fairly interesting. Characters are 10th level, they control a small country of Miksylvania, and have been dreading the events coming up soon where I take them entirely off the rails of the adventure path. I've re-skinned the fallen cyclops empire as the non-men from the Prince of Nothing/Aspect Emperor series, and they're currently raiding a cyclops lichs tomb. Next stop is a plot I've been building up for over a year now involving kidnapping a guys girlfriend, fighting an evil fey prince, and surviving a crazy hunger-games type situation within his domain.
I don't schedule my games anymore. My players basically do all that work for me now. So I'd say they're pretty excited. But I'm always digging for more info and trying to figure out how I can make it that much better. We do have one problem, the fighter moved to St. Louis. So far he's driven two hours to play and two hours back, but I really don't think that's the best possible situation because it means we have to schedule around him having an entire day off to play.
If you look around at the world of RPGs what do you see? Anywhere you go in the RPG community there are the same questions over and over again. I have X problem in my game, what do I do about it? How do I find players? How do I find a GM? How do I be a better GM? The people are asking these questions because their games suck balls.
If I go to places where people would ask advice because they need help, I'd find a lot of people that need help? Isn't that kinda like saying all cars are broken because I went to a mechanic and found a lot of them being fixed?
It's not a mechanic. It's every place role playing games are discussed the number one thing being discussed is problems. There are many things you could discuss in a community about role playing games, but why are the same handful of questions the most repeated discussions in every single one of those communities?
Because nerds like to complain about every fucking thing?
I also wanna take this opportunity to mention that I do mostly agree with you re: rules changes. With the exception of one specific thing that can really only happen in 4e, I don't change rules or situations.
Also, how does "How do I find players?" "How do I find a DM?" add to your point?
Why did this thread become so active and interesting now when I'm away from computer and stuck with smartphone touchscreen and shitty internet connection.
Let me ask you this. All you people who are arguing against us. How are your RPGs going? Are they all totally awesome and perfect, or are they wrought with problems and strife?
Thanks for asking. My game is doing great. I admit that it's not the best campaign I've ran but it's still pretty damn good. Week afer week I'm amazed at how great pláyers I have.
GMing is not an art form. Storytelling is an art form. Creating games is an art form. A GM is just a person in a game who must follow the instructions given by the game. Is being a referee an art form? No.
So you can't create art while stricly following rules but you should follow rules absolutely while roleplaying and your (personal) goal is to create stories. Are those stories not art then?
So you can't create art while stricly following rules but you should follow rules absolutely while roleplaying and your (personal) goal is to create stories. Are those stories not art then?
A role playing game is a machine that creates a story. GMing is just one of the tasks that must be execute to crank the machine. You should crank the machine according to the instructions. That is the part that is GMing. There are inevitably steps in the instructions that call for a storytelling task to be performed. How well you perform those steps is not GMing, it's storytelling, as players must perform those steps as well.
For example, you play Inspectres. You roll an academics check to do research in the library about sewer monsters. You roll perfectly! According to the rules you now have complete narrative control of the library scene. You followed the rules exactly, and now they call on you to tell a story. Telling that story is done with the skill of storytelling, not the skill of game mastering or game playing.
I dunno. My Pathfinder groups tend to exist in that flux state where we use the game's mechanics when we want, but fall to Roleplaying when it works. We don't completely ignore the game's rules, but change small things when we want (Like maximum skill points you're allowed to allocate or other small things). And we tend to enjoy that in-between area. I'm not saying it's for everyone, but my DM and his girlfriend find the combat in Pathfinder to be relatively boring, and we enjoy the storytelling much more. We follow an intricate storyline the DM has created which often features our character's backstories in some form. And to us, that's pretty cool. It's not the only way to do it, but we happen to like it.
If you don't like the combat in pathfinder, why do you play Pathfinder? If you are changing the rules of the game, it's because you don't like the game you are playing. The solution is to play a different game, not change the rules of the one you have.
Fuck my phone. Let's edit this post to comment on some other things that have come up.
First. The idea that storytelling is somehow separate thing from GMing is silly. Storytelling is included to the work description of GM in most games at least, it's not some complitely separate thing.
Also on the topic of modifying games. In a way that comes back to what you said about developer knowing best. If I like most elements of one system why wouldn't I play modified version of the game with only the elements I like and not the elements I dislike. Wouldn't that br preferred to making your own inferior system or using other system which possibly has it's own problems.
For example I love so many things about Mouse Guard rpg. The setting, character creation, how skills and abilities work, the conflict system, but every time I think about running it I remember tge turn structure and it kills my excitement. That system just doesn't synch well with me. That's why I've been thinking about hacking the turn structure away. Basically I have to just figure out what to do with checks and I can have my mouse guard themed burning wheel light.
If the rules say the player should have been crippled, you should have let the player be crippled. You are making the false assumption that a crippled player is unplayable. In fact, becoming crippled is epic! I lost a foot in our last BW game. It ended up being a somewhat important point. I was once going about town doing all sorts of crazy stuff. Now I was hobbling, and people were coming to visit me in my cottage. Do you see how following the rules created drama and awesome story that would not have existed otherwise?
It also has an effect on player behavior. In Burning Wheel, characters aren't superheroes. They are vulnerable human beings in a dangerous and nasty medieval world. If players know they can avoid consequences for their actions, they will have no reason not to do all sorts of dangerous things at no risk because the pussy GM won't follow the rules and bring the hammer down. Teach those fools a lesson.
When I play BW I am fucking scared as shit of consequences. You make decisions to hold the dice with fear. You robbed the players of that feeling of vulnerability.
They are playing a different game. They are playing Pathfinder Plus Some Rules We Like.
Yes. We play Pathfinder because the other content in Pathfinder is to our liking.
And it's not that we don't like Pathfinder's combat, it's that we aren't huge fans of combat in general. Pathfinder does combat in a way we like, and we don't mess with the combat rules too heavily, we just find games that are focused on player's fighting monsters every 20 minutes to be boring. We've done sessions that are just pure roleplaying, and that's the way we like it. We enjoy combat when it has some meaning or point. But we've found we're generally not a huge fan of random encounter every other room.
Comments
There are game designers that are good and have done that work. Unfortunately they tend to make games in very specific ways or with very narrow focuses, so when the players want a certain kind of game you have to grab the system that best appeals to that. Most players are not you and don't value the mechanics of the system above everything; my players come in and say they want to play around in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, so Dark Heresy comes out because that's what there is, even though that system is not optimal.
As a GM, I know why that system is sub-optimal, but I also know that my players want the trappings that come with it. So yes, I do fudge things. At the start of the game I tell everyone that, okay, this rule is not happening because it's broken and caused us misery last game. You could argue that I'm not playing Dark Heresy anymore and I've ruined the purity of the system or whatever the fuck, but I don't care. Roleplaying games are not a competitive test of skill. The rules are there to provide structure to the story and keep everyone grounded. In situations where the rules are hindering that goal rather than helping it, the rules can go into the fuck-off bin until we're running smoothly again.
There is no perfect system which encompasses all situations, settings and types of roleplaying, and it isn't easy to just port the rules of something you like to the setting of something you want to play because the rules influence the way games are played. If you try to use D&D rules to play a cyberpunk game, you quickly find yourself breaking down doors and stealing treasure, but you are beholden to your players sometimes and you need to find a way to make that shit work even when it's really stupid. Like, for example, fudging the rules in your D&D cyberpunk game so that their first attempt at breaking down doors and stealing treasure scares them into not doing that again for a while.
GMing is absolutely an artform. You yourself said in the other thread that spawned this topic that GMing takes practice. If GMing was just refereeing, why would practice be a determining factor of success? Once you had all of the rules mastered, what would any additional practice offer? Someone with perfect memorization would be the ultimate GM, if what you say is true. :P
Extremeley few people are capable of choosing the right tools. If you were, you would be a game designer. Most people feel like a particular choice is going to make things better, but they are most often catastrophically wrong. What they thought would improve their game has made it worse.
Think about all the people who put money on Free Parking in Monopoly. They think it makes the game more fun, but all it really does is increase the influence of luck and vastly increase the play time.
If you buy a good RPG, one that is very popular and made by quality game designers, you are benefiting from a great deal of work that they have done. These people have already play tested their game extensively. At their gaming tables they have done all those rule modifications you speak of. They figured out through some science what rules created the most fun. They have tested those rules on multiple different groups of people and found those rules maximize fun and minimize problems among that wide variety of players.
Then when it came time to publish the game they wrote the already modified rules that have been thoroughly vetted and perfected over time. If you want to maximize fun at your table, your best bet is to learn by heart every single rule in your game of choice, and to follow those rules as precisely as possible with no modifications.
If you truly master every rule in the book, and have played many sessions this way, and you are not having fun, then the game is a bad game. Play a different game.
I can tell you that we use to have all those typical oft-discussed problems. They went away when we started following rules. Even though we may play Burning Wheel or Inspectres, there are still problems. Those problems almost always arise because we do not know a rule, or we get a rule wrong. For example, one of Rym's characters was once severely mutilated in a situation that made no sense, and seemed unfair. It was because we did not know the rule of steel withdraw.
As far as I can tell, your solution has been tried, and it has also failed. :P
The games themselves are the least of these players' problems. They're not even at the point of playing the games. They're stuck on such fundamental issues, issues that go largely unspoken of in popular rpg circles.
They're like drivers asking how to replace a distributor cap who don't understand what said distributor cap does or even if it is the cause of their problem.
Like children, these worldborn tabletop role players belie their questions, their very premises, with a clear and fundamental misunderstanding of the source of their problems.
They "want to play D&D." They don't think about what D&D is, or what it provides. They don't think about what the actual experience is that they want. The address symptoms of their problems, but never see the source.
1) Shitty game, don't play it.
2) There is a rule about parrying while holding onto a ledge with both hands, and you just don't know it.
3) Rules don't suck, you just don't know how good they are because you are a bad judge of what rules are good and what rules are bad.
First, you are trying to create the general game. The game for as many people as possible. This does not cover the nuances of every particular group that will play your game. This yields both a certain percentage of people that will inherently have problems because it's not the game they think it is, and that there are slight differences that would make the game better (more "fun") for a particular group.
Second, supposing you don't just build games out of love, you have a goal to sell product. This changes the metric by which you measure your success as a game designer. It's no-longer about selling the highest quality game, but about creating a suitably good game that will sell well and make you an income.
Certainly, despite those two, there are some great designers. Some of the ones I've met are certainly closer to the Scottworldian uber-designer than I am. But it's important to realize their circumstances.
A GM is only responsible for that table at that moment in time. The metric for measuring your success is how well the game itself went. It's closer to the customer.
I would say the problem I'm most familiar with lately is people that character optimize and end up being able to walk over the designed-as-intended encounters to such a degree that there is only a trivial chance of failure. When you realize this, and see that the only thing pulling the game from point a to point b is a thin strand of story (from a series of fairly disconnected modules), and then see that even though your "character" and "story" are advancing, they're not actually any different than they were at first level because the game is well scaled numerically so the differences are all just numbers, the realization happens that they're just wasting their time doing the same thing over and over again. Break out your cellphone and play some angry birds then.
Also "If you follow the rules exactly, you will have fun." seems meme-worthy.
There are certainly plenty of Stockholm gaming groups out there.
Pretty awesome. I'm running a fairly modified version of the Pathfinder Kingmaker adventure path, which is fairly interesting. Characters are 10th level, they control a small country of Miksylvania, and have been dreading the events coming up soon where I take them entirely off the rails of the adventure path. I've re-skinned the fallen cyclops empire as the non-men from the Prince of Nothing/Aspect Emperor series, and they're currently raiding a cyclops lichs tomb. Next stop is a plot I've been building up for over a year now involving kidnapping a guys girlfriend, fighting an evil fey prince, and surviving a crazy hunger-games type situation within his domain.
I don't schedule my games anymore. My players basically do all that work for me now. So I'd say they're pretty excited. But I'm always digging for more info and trying to figure out how I can make it that much better. We do have one problem, the fighter moved to St. Louis. So far he's driven two hours to play and two hours back, but I really don't think that's the best possible situation because it means we have to schedule around him having an entire day off to play.
I also wanna take this opportunity to mention that I do mostly agree with you re: rules changes. With the exception of one specific thing that can really only happen in 4e, I don't change rules or situations.
Also, how does "How do I find players?" "How do I find a DM?" add to your point?
a storytelling task to be performed. How well you perform those steps is not GMing, it's storytelling, as players must perform those steps as well.
For example, you play Inspectres. You roll an academics check to do research in the library about sewer monsters. You roll perfectly! According to the rules you now have complete narrative control of the library scene. You followed the rules exactly, and now they call on you to tell a story. Telling that story is done with the skill of storytelling, not the skill of game mastering or game playing.
And we tend to enjoy that in-between area.
I'm not saying it's for everyone, but my DM and his girlfriend find the combat in Pathfinder to be relatively boring, and we enjoy the storytelling much more. We follow an intricate storyline the DM has created which often features our character's backstories in some form. And to us, that's pretty cool. It's not the only way to do it, but we happen to like it.
First. The idea that storytelling is somehow separate thing from GMing is silly. Storytelling is included to the work description of GM in most games at least, it's not some complitely separate thing.
Also on the topic of modifying games. In a way that comes back to what you said about developer knowing best. If I like most elements of one system why wouldn't I play modified version of the game with only the elements I like and not the elements I dislike. Wouldn't that br preferred to making your own inferior system or using other system which possibly has it's own problems.
For example I love so many things about Mouse Guard rpg. The setting, character creation, how skills and abilities work, the conflict system, but every time I think about running it I remember tge turn structure and it kills my excitement. That system just doesn't synch well with me. That's why I've been thinking about hacking the turn structure away. Basically I have to just figure out what to do with checks and I can have my mouse guard themed burning wheel light.
If the rules say the player should have been crippled, you should have let the player be crippled. You are making the false assumption that a crippled player is unplayable. In fact, becoming crippled is epic! I lost a foot in our last BW game. It ended up being a somewhat important point. I was once going about town doing all sorts of crazy stuff. Now I was hobbling, and people were coming to visit me in my cottage. Do you see how following the rules created drama and awesome story that would not have existed otherwise?
It also has an effect on player behavior. In Burning Wheel, characters aren't superheroes. They are vulnerable human beings in a dangerous and nasty medieval world. If players know they can avoid consequences for their actions, they will have no reason not to do all sorts of dangerous things at no risk because the pussy GM won't follow the rules and bring the hammer down. Teach those fools a lesson.
When I play BW I am fucking scared as shit of consequences. You make decisions to hold the dice with fear. You robbed the players of that feeling of vulnerability.
We play Pathfinder because the other content in Pathfinder is to our liking.
And it's not that we don't like Pathfinder's combat, it's that we aren't huge fans of combat in general. Pathfinder does combat in a way we like, and we don't mess with the combat rules too heavily, we just find games that are focused on player's fighting monsters every 20 minutes to be boring. We've done sessions that are just pure roleplaying, and that's the way we like it. We enjoy combat when it has some meaning or point. But we've found we're generally not a huge fan of random encounter every other room.