Do players secretly admire and idolize GMs?
>>43920964
I mostly pity them, despite being thankful for them.
>>43920964
>Admire
*snerk*
>Idolize
BWA HA HA HA HA *pfffttt* Hoo HAA ha ha ho hoh ha hue hee.
Hooo..
ohhh...
No. No.
I feel sorry for them and their god complexes, and for the entire gaming community that they push their egotistical bullshit on everyone and end up making gaming a more hostile and inhospitable place.
If you actually identify as a GM, rather than simply someone who happens to facilitate games from time to time, then I have no sympathy for you, and probably actively hate you for what you do to the hobby.
>>43920964
Hah.
No.
A solid 2/3 of the GMs I've had have been shit.
>>43921335
>identify as a GM
>rather than someone who happens to facilitate games from time to time
I'll have what he's having.
>>43920964
The best GMs would probably sooner eat razorblades than identify as a GM.
>>43921335
"I identify as a person who facilitates games from time to time! Check your :) privilege shitlord!"
>>43921335
>I feel sorry for them and their god complexes, and for the entire gaming community that they push their egotistical bullshit on everyone and end up making gaming a more hostile and inhospitable place.
Show us on the doll where your gm touched you?
>>43920964
Holy shite this is a cute pic.
Players, all of them, see DMs as something they are owed. As someone who's job it is to cater to them and make sure that they are enjoying themselves, and if the DM ever does something to challenge that, they just throw a tantrum and make the game shit until they decide to leave.
Yes, someone will reply saying "lol im not like that" or "lol my group doesnt do that", but we all know that's not true.
>>43921505
I sure as fuck can't call myself a player, considering I haven't been anything but a DM in many years.
Let me say this plainly, OP.
Being a good DM takes effort. Be it as a planned story or in free form, running a tale that entertains a handful of other people has requirements. A setting that flows well, shows your adaptability to pc choices, comes to life with characterization, and is held together by organization or a hell of a memory are some of the base requirements. I GM because I can't stand it when someone is worse than I am at these things. If you can't make one character, you certainly can't be diverse with randomly encountered npcs. Therefore, you probably don't have a snowball's chance in hell of hosting a setting. GMs are as they are not because they just 'can't find a game.' We simply 'can't find a game to our standards,' so they run one instead. That's often the case when I speak to folk, to at least some degree. Therefore, I've come to believe that the DM is ultimately what becomes of players that grow dissatisfied with mundane, dull sessions.
To answer your question then, no. A player probably isn't ever the sort to be jealous of a gm until suddenly one day they find themselves in their shoes, thinking back to what they remember the hosts of their old sessions did well.
I do with 3 of them.
My first GM, a beautiful, magnificent and magnanimous man. Joke, but he is a great guy and I look up to him. Very funny and creative and soothing voice.
My second GM, thoughtful, cool and creative guy with infinite patience for us autists.
And a recent one, young, full of references, reliable and rather comedic.
Ive been excsprionally lucky with GMs.
Even besides these three my GMs have been top notch all funny, all realiable and focused, all ci
Ompetent save a couple.
Mostly enjoyable players too.
Ttrpg has just been a great part of my life for me.
>>43921794
>I GM because I can't stand it when someone is worse than I am at these things
Exactly the reason I will probably never be a player again. The concept of having to deal with a shitty DM and trying to enjoy myself is too painful.
I think the reason most players don't DM is because they just don't have standards. But that's fine, because I really don't think anyone has the right to be an elitist and a player at the same time.
>>43921335
>>43921505
>Identify as a GM
Kill yourselves. If you "identify" as anything you should kill yourself right now. You either are something or you aren't, you don't get to not be something and say you "identify" as that thing, and vice versa. I can't be Chinese and say I identify as a nigger, and I can't be a soldier and say I identify as a civilian. This "identify" bullshit needs to go away, and your shitty trolling or just outright stupidity in shitting on everyone who dares to run a game for your neckbeard ass needs to go away too. Yes I'm mad.
If this is bait, I rate it 8 out of fucking 10, made me respond immediately, if only because I've met people like this in real life.
>>43921794
>>43921862
I used to think that GMing was a burden, but then every time that I was a player I played with the worst GMs.
I am now very proud of being a GM and I make a great effort to have entertaining and fun campaigns for my players.
I don't want to go back.
I kinda idolized my first ever DM but that's because he was legitimately amazing at what he did. I had a great introduction to tabletop gaming because of that guy. Forever indebted to him, honestly.
>>43920964
I am GMing a lot. And I think the role of a GM is too different from that of players nowadays; it was much simpler when I played AD&D back then.
It felt like we were playing together, and now I look at GMs and playets and it seems they are playing *against* each other.
My way of GMing is a bit peculiar and many have criticized me; I offload some of my functions evenly between other players exactly because I've found it becomes less competitive and more friendly.
>mfw forever GM
>>43922642
>So, do you guys want to go dungeon crawling today?
>No? You just want to choose loot and win the game? Ok, that's cool.
>>43921335
>>43921335
Thanks anon I can't really help that I'm forever DM, atleast this threads helps me with my confidence.
>>43921335
Is that you, virtualoptim?
>>43921696
this, more cute pics
>>43922918
>>43921977
In your maddened rage you brought out bad examples.
I am a GM. I don't need to identify myself as anything, be it a storyteller or as an ordinary person.
A soldier can identify themselves as civilians, this shows you haven't gone through any sort of military training, mandatory or not. Most soldiers have home to return to and they identify themselves through their origins. Unless you are so programmed into their way of thinking and fall under their supposed authority.
Now if you manage through a mandatory draft in any military most of the participants relate more towards their civilian side than their soldiering side, even if they take up the mantle of a person in service.
You seem to have a hard time with the word identify as it has been used by many to describe their sexual orientation. Yes, I can be of any origin, be it Chinese or German or American and identify myself as a 'nigger.' (In this case I suspect you mean nigger as a preconceived way of acting. If you mean as a racial slur, then I am wrong in this case.)
Not mad, just concerned.
>>43920964
idolize? only to make it "honourable" to be GM , so i keep doing it for the lazy little shits
a god? no
but as long as you make your games fair (which is a stretchable definition) and choose to offer enough player freedom , they will at least respect and support you
I GM not for honor but because every other GM I've played with hasn't been able to do it good enough.
>mfw a player-turned-GM introduces a DMPC that has a 'weapon of kickass +15'
I wish I had GMs I could idolize. I live in a pretty small town so I've never really known one other than myself. Except maybe my brother. We learned to GM by playing games with each other growing up. Very story focused. Very character rich. Very fun stuff.
But after we moved to different towns I found myself not knowing anyone with experience in TTRPGs. So I tried to drum up interest in them amongst my friends only to find some of the worst players imaginable. A couple of them have forayed into attempting to GM, and I've tried to help them every step of the way because I am genuinely excited to see the world and the story they want to tell in it. But there always seems to be too many rules for them to keep track of or too much preparation work they don't do and then fail to improvise well under pressure... And their storytelling is almost nonexistent. I think it's because none of them are really all that well read so none are really familiar with story structure or proper narrative. All of them have played more video games than read books.
I guess I GM because all of my friends are more obsessed with game mechanics than story or character development and while it's almost impossible for me to find the experience I enjoy under a bad GM I can kind of get by as a GM with a bunch of bad players. The rest of the players seem to enjoy themselves better with me GMing too so that's something. I'll just keep trying to slowly encourage them to be better roleplayers.
>>43920964
Some people are afraid to show admiration, I think it's mix of jealousy, authority issues, lack of empathy, and just being a total pushover in general. There are guys out that feel "Well no one respects me, why should I show respect to others?" mentality.
When I recognize merit, I will tell them how great of the job they're doing post game, because I want to them to keep doing it and I'd like the same graditude in return if it were me in his shoes. Good GMs are rare, keep them for long as you can.
Idolize? Maybe, their confidence or how much free time they have.
>>43920964
My group of players do, we really love our GM. After the session and he leaves to do whatever he does, we usually talk about how good of a GM he is.
>>43925740
The thing about admiration and idolization is that you have to find whoever is being admired and idolized worthy of respect in either a singular area, or many areas.
GMing requires a lot of stuff, and something as simple as style and what is or isn't focused on can make a GM feel imperfect, or not quite what you want.
>Tfw I'm always GM in my group because everyone else in my group has zero fucking creativity when it comes to improvisation unless it affects their characters personally.
>Only other person that GM'd once invited five other people to our game so we had a party of nine rather than our usual four
>Didn't know this until we actually arrived there
>All were a bunch of newbies who had never played PnP before
>Took an hour and a half to make all their characters and shit
>Didn't let us start the game without them and have them join half way in
>The first encounter lasted over an hour
>Ready to kill myself
>Roll a 1
>Fall on my sword
>Die
>Leave
>Group of friends secretly agrees to never let friend GM again
>Haven't played a game with my own character in months
>Always GM having to put up with my friends wacky antics
I'll give it that it's fun and it's always hilarious punishing my friends for trying risky or stupid shit but I miss being the one doing the risky and stupid shit myself.
>>43925412
If soldiers identify themselves as civilians while on duty, your military has a serious problem
>>43921265
Heres your honorary (you), now 200% more free
Anyone other GM's ever feel like their players never really care about the characters, world or lore you create and only their characters and what they own and earn?
In my last game my party stumbled across an Ogre living in a mud hut on the outer edges of a marsh. On entering they saw the Ogre and got ready for combat, only for him to greet them in a friendly voice and invite them inside. Everyone was on edge and did perception and investigation rolls to see if anything was amiss, and noticed he just seemed to be like an ordinary guy, but an Ogre. After this they just started calling him Shrek over an over and spouting fucking memes. I talked about his back story and how he was granted intelligence by a master mage, whom he worked for as an assistant and eventually became his apprentice. After his mentor died he left the school with a journeyman knowledge of magic and spent his last three hundred years of life living in the outskirts of the marsh. (I explained all this because someone asked him why he could talk so well.)
After this was said the group decided to go find some fucking onions for Shrek, travelled to the nearest town, bought a sack of onions and a fucking donkey and brought it back. The high level mage granted the donkey the ability to speak and then gave it to the Ogre as a gift. Then they left the swamp all laughing at their memes. None of them even discovered he was the best Blacksmith in the Kingdom, and was the only one who could forge Dragon items.
>>43926464
The way I counter stuff like that is by throwing it right back the players and also rewarding players when they do interact with the world.
I once ended up consistently referring to one of my players as 'McRae Rally Racing' because he was avoiding everything that wasn't combat and constantly rolling sneaking rolls instead of being engaged in the story and roleplaying and his character's name was pronounced the same way as Rally.
Meanwhile, another player permanently crippled a villain by interacting with the world and its characterseven if it was just because he didn't want to part with a handful of coin and instead decided to break the leg of the NPC.
>>43921764
Nah, you just suck at conditioning players. I'm not saying I'm an exception, I'm saying any DM worth his salt with a fresh table can avoid that mentality.
>>43926464
That's just not that great a backstory. How are they supposed to get from "this ogre knows magic and is not a dum-dum thanks to a wizard" to "he's a master blacksmith"?
You know who they might think if as a master blacksmith?
Shrek: former student of some other blacksmith or maybe Shrek: the ogre with a fucking smelting oven in his mud hut.
>>43926464
didnt he have blacksmith stuff lying around?
>>43926970
Yeah, someone rolled an investigation test, noticed a giant sized anvil, a 7m long Zweihander mounted on a wall and a suit of armour on a display.
>>43926954
I realise it's not the greatest, I have much better characters as an example, I was more just dumbfounded that they had no care for what the character might offer them as a party, and why I would have them stumble on this for nothing. Like I said above, in their perception tests they saw that blacksmithing shit was lying around but didn't pry any further into it.
How do I make them care, because at the moment I feel like writing character backstories is a waste of time unless it's an NPC that is related to another player in some way.
>>43926885
Good stuff anon. I usually do shit like this, like a halfling rogue in my last game who decided to sneak off in the main city from the escort the party was meant to protect to steal shit. He ended up stealing from a collector of cursed artifacts and got himself possessed by a greater demon.
>>43921335
>If you actually identify as a GM
Yes. You should never identify as what you actually are, but rather refer to it in some confusing, indirect way.
>I'm not a pizza delivery guy, I'm just a guy who happens to facilitate transport of boxed, Italian-inspired cuisine from time to time.
>I'm not a banker. I'm just a guy who happens to facilitate the management of currency from time to time.
>What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I'm not a Navy SEAL, but I'm a guy who kills people for a living as a Navy SEAL, and...
>>43927183
give them penalties story-wise , as in "you need to bring x here so he/she can tell the dragon to let party go to x , so there is no need for letting half the players die"
>>43921335
Fuck you. I'm a forever DM and if that's what players think of me, I feel sorry for them. I do it because I like it, not because I have
>god complexes
Stop projecting your shit.
>>43927183
by the way , what was the name of troll-smith? i hope it was Godo
>>43925541
>I GM not for honor but for YOU!
>>43927291
>that last one
>>43920964
Hahahahaha, no. Get back to work plot-monkey
>>43927401
Snaaakeee eaaateeeer
>>43927484
Through rulebooks and spreadsheets in the night
>>43927397
Ogre-Smith's name was Kor'gall. Funnily enough later in the game they stumbled upon him in a full suit of plate armour with his giant Zweihander, surrounded by a group of dead mercs that had destroyed his home and driven him out. They just ignored him and continued on their way. I was kind of mad.
In any case even if a party is retarded it still feels rewarding when you get them on the right track and they play their characters properly and do cool shit every now and then. It's just everything between that makes you want to drink bleach.
>>43926464
sounds like they had fun, unlike you
i like the idea of giving shrek a talking donkey more fun than whatever you had planned
>>43921335
I foresee this becoming pasta. Which is a shame because its not very good bait. Though you wouldn't know it by the number of booty-blasted folks.
People around here are so easily tried it is becoming sad. Hopefully this thread either fades away or becomes a good discussion about something else as we are wont to do.
>>43921335
Kekpocalypse!
Dunno. Just like creating worlds and creating scenarios.
I always play overlord in descent too
>>43926464
Surprised at the reactions from all these shitnuggets in this thread. I agree with you. You had a decent story for that ogre and your players just fucked it all up with references and memes. I accidentally (in hindsight it was a mistake) put an ogre in the path of my players and, of course, they all called him shrek.
I also put an adventuring pair of guys in their path (chilling at the adventurer's guild) and they decided to call them bill and Ted after I shared their names. They never took them seriously until I had one of the two killed, and then they finally took the other into the party and were reasonably serious about him.
Shit like this drives me absolutely nuts. Can anyone take this game "seriously"? And I put that I quotes because obviously it's about having fun, but really if you can't have fun without constantly spouting references to shows and anime and whatever other horseshit then you've got a major problem
>>43930175
Thankfully, my current group is not one I have to worry about pop-culture reference jokes and memes entering the game, because that's just not the kind of people they are. Like, we joke around sometimes, but it's generally always in the context of the game.
I do get really annoyed when they can't remember NPC names, especially for NPCs they've been interacting with for a while now. It's not even hard, you just write it down. But they never do and always forget.
Literally, there was an NPC one of the players had a connection to named "Swarthy". Nothing complicated, nothing crazy. Yet in the process of finding him when he vanished, everyone came up with something new trying to remember his name, like "Swargy" or some shit. I'm just sitting there with my head in my hands.
I don't know enough about a group I just started DMing for to say for sure, but I've had groups who's solution to fucking EVERYTHING was "Let's just go back to town and do it later." They killed a goblin camp and discovered the goblins had been weakened due to skeletons coming in and fucking their shit up and taking back treasure the goblins stole, meaning there's clearly a skeleton trail they can follow to free treasure. "Eh, let's just go back to town." FUCKING TWO DAYS WALK AWAY.
>>43926464
>Anyone other GM's ever feel like their players never really care about the characters, world or lore you create and only their characters and what they own and earn?
Oh fuck yes.
Especially if you ever, ever take away their precious gear.
Few months back, I had this happen.
>players get hired as couriers.
>Have to take a message from point A to point B.
>With some investigative work, they learn that the most direct road between the two cities is heavily infested by bandits, who sprouted up seemingly out of nowhere a few months ago.
>So they go traipsing down the road taking no precautions whatsoever.
>Get ambushed
>Get robbed by bandits who drop nets on them and hold them at crossbow point.
>Lose all of their cash on hand.
Painful, but not debilitating, especially since these are the equivalent of lvl 1 characters and don't have much of their cash, most of their wealth is tied up in gear which the bandits viewed as too heavy relative to its weight to be worth stealing.
Then 3 of the 5 characters committed suicide, and tried to persuade the other two to do so as well. That way, they can roll up new characters who have their full complement of stuff.
>>43930515
You have my inner-DM frothing at the mouth
Dare I ask for more stories?
Also, I was a player in a group once with someone who killed their own character (walked into a lake and drowned) after being dissatisfied that the town guard wouldn't let him bring a goblin in
>>43930601
I stopped playing with that group. I don't like metagamers, and that's about as metagamey as you can get.
But I've DMed a fair bit, and I have a lot of stories. Anything in particular you're looking for?
>>43930515
>Then 3 of the 5 characters committed suicide, and tried to persuade the other two to do so as well. That way, they can roll up new characters who have their full complement of stuff.
I would either start their new characters off as paupers or saddle them with negative experience points. But then, I'm an asshole like that.
>>43930670
I guess keeping with the theme of shit players ruining what a GM has prepared
>>43930515
Then have those players roll up their new characters, but say that they're haunted by three spirits who were too greedy in life and take their gold every so often.
>>43930802
I think my worst in that regard (and I've told this story a couple of times before, you might have heard it) was the following, different group, playing 3.5 (which usually presages trouble)
>Low level campaign
>Fairly basic, big wave of Monstrous Humanoid invasion/migration out from a chain of mountains east of the kingdom the PCs live in.
>PCs are kind of special forces, doing missions here and there to try to help turn the tide.
>Had a little table for how the various local nobility does when there is no PC help in their province, a fairly pessimistic one: if they didn't help, the orcs and kind usually won.
>One lucky then-nameless NPC baron rolled a 97, and won a decisive victory, enough to earn him a real name and a small statblock.
>King calls him to the capital, congratulates him alongside the PCs for being rays of hope in these dark times, trying to rally people to the flag.
>Players, who instantly jumped to the assumption that I was going to have a DMPC steal their spotlight, turn around and murder the baron in front of the court.
>They were surprised when they got thrown in the dungeon and were sentenced to death for this, too.
>>43930728
>>43930862
Like I said, I don't like metagamers, even if I punish them in this instance, they're going to come up with other crap. And whine the whole time too. Easier just to drop them and look for good players.
>>43920964
I loathe them and want to hurt them. They're kind of like lawyers. I know I need them in order to do my thing, but I don't have to like them.
>>43931023
>they were surprised when they got thrown in the dungeon
I wouldn't believe this were it not for the fact that I've encountered shitbuckets like this in my games. When players treat ttrpgs like vidya games it saps all of my energy and sanity, especially when GMing.
>>43931023
See, in this scenario I'd want to make friends with the baron. I love having an NPC friend, and it'd be cool to chum up with this guy and use his castle or whatever he has as a base of operations.
I think of our groups forever DM a lot like atlus. Punished to carry the world for eternity. Thats what happens when all your player characters suck. But we do need him, no forever GM means no games. Every time some one else runs a game which we all do they kind of evaporate after a few sessions.
>>43921335
I bet you play dps in MMOs.
>Healer master race here
>Will suck tank cock for loot
>>43930515
My current set of players got their characters captured by the villain because they wanted to loot an entire temple even though they had been warned by a helpful NPC that the villain most likely was on their trail and they'd have to hurry not to end up face-to-face with him.
Since the villain has no real use for them alive, I am considering having the villain and his goons dispose of the party's equipment but I don't know if that would be too much.
>>43920964
As a player I always admired my GMs, don't know if I idolized them, but they were always really good GMs and helped me become a better one.
I low-key idolized my last GM because he was a good person. He's a fellow owner of my FLGS back home. Anyway, he ran a few 5e modules for folks, and I signed on and he was very kind. He clearly put effort into giving everybody time to share the spotlight when he was running games, and despite having to deal with a lot of inconsistent players he was a good sport through it all.
He was very accepting of new players and just seemed to do his best to help everyone involved have fun, but -- and here's probably the part I admire most -- he knew exactly when and HOW to put his foot down and say "I'm the DM, I have the final say on rulings." I'm not that assertive, so I'm still kind of envious of his ability to do that.
I think the difficulty of managing it all got to him, though, and later he wound up having a scheduling conflict with his other job that I think may have been partially engineered. Still, I was glad to have him as a DM as long as I did.
>>43927497
you beefed it
>>43920964
From what I've seen, the answer is somewhere between 'no' and 'hell no'. They'd act a lot more respectful if they did, and players who are both enthusiastic and polite are rare in my experience.
You do get the occasional 'GM can do no wrong how dare you not have fun' players but they're rare too (and annoying).
>>43931023
>They were surprised when they got thrown in the dungeon and were sentenced to death for this, too.
What exactly were they thinking will happen?
>>43933690
Some people operate on the logic that because they are real people their PC's in the fictional world should be able to do whatever they please without consequence regardless of how much sense that makes.
I have seen similar whining when players in a modern game did a really sloppy bank job and got gunned down by SWAT when they charged out of the front door visibly armed.
>>43933690
>What exactly were they thinking will happen?
HUGE portions of the player base, including much of /tg/, hold the mentality that "I'm a PC, my character is special and so rules don't apply because I'm the hero of the story, so the DM wouldn't do something that would stop that from being true", and so they operate like brainless murder-machines who live in consequence-free worlds.
Players are...not smart people.
>>43920964
This feels like really weird bait, but I don't know what taking it would look like.
>>43921794
>I GM because I can't stand it when someone is worse than I am at these things.
Fuck I know that feel. Every single time I try to PC I end up thinking of an awesome idea for the setting I'm in and it drives me nuts not being able to take advantage.
>>43934133
You forgot the part where they claim that any DM who does enforce logical consequences of their actions is a piece of shit railroading crap DM, and should be avoided at all costs.
I secretly admired my first GM, but that was because he was a man that dropped all his points in charisma and made anyone laugh at anything.
Players fear and envy GMs. Fortunately they're easily cowed.
>>43936179
Sounds like a good guy.
