From Troll in the Corner: "To put it bluntly, the GM's job is to be defeated by the players in the most entertaining way for everyone involved."

Agree? Disagree?

Quote from: Black Vulmea;667265From Troll in the Corner: "To put it bluntly, the GM’s job is to be defeated by the players in the most entertaining way for everyone involved."

Agree? Disagree?

Disagree.  It's not a competition.  Something that seems to be lost in the past decade or so more than ever.

There's a reason why the DM was originally called the "referee", and not some term that implied he or she was at odds with the players.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;667265From Troll in the Corner: "To put it bluntly, the GM’s job is to be defeated by the players in the most entertaining way for everyone involved."

Agree? Disagree?

To some extent this is true, but only in regards to combat challenges.

My reasoning is that if the players lose more often than they win, in combat, the game is essentially over early.

But if a game is more roleplay than combat, 'defeat' does not really apply.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;667265From Troll in the Corner: "To put it bluntly, the GM's job is to be defeated by the players in the most entertaining way for everyone involved."

Agree? Disagree?

Mostly disagree, but there are some really fun games that you can have with an adversarial DM in a "Tomb of Horrors" type scenario.

No, it's not my job to be "defeated". This is starting from an assumption that the game wouldn't be fun if you lost, which is bullshit. The possibility of failure should be there, and if you fail, it doesn't necessarily mean you had a horrible time, or really, if that is systematically the case, you need to play another game that strokes your ego better than O/AD&D.

My job is to run the environment fairly. That means there is a milieu that exists outside the influence of the PCs, that the PCs come in contact with it by exploring the unknown, investigating stuff, going "out there," impact it, and the environment answers in kind. I'll do my best to play the undead mindless, the orcs as dumb, the evil magic user as a smart guy. And if they want to kill you, they're going to try their best (whatever that means as far as they're concerned) to do just that. It's up to you to survive.

Agree, for some sufficiently broad definitions of "defeat" that don't involve the GM actually playing to win at any point.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;667265From Troll in the Corner: "To put it bluntly, the GM's job is to be defeated by the players in the most entertaining way for everyone involved."

Agree? Disagree?

He didn't really elaborate very much, so I don't know precisely what direction he was heading with this (I could see him starting here but explaining it in a way that fits my approach more than the statement at first suggests). But I don't really agree with it. I think it is one approach, it may work for some people, but I would not use it for myself as a guideline and I wouldn't want my GM to. I think an important part of play for me is the very real possibility that we don't overcome the challenge. That is one of the things that makes it so much more exciting than your typical movie or book (you really don't know if everything will turn out okay in the end). So for me, I don't want the GM to see it as his job to be defeated by the players. I want him to present the players with interesting situations, a fleshed out setting and exciting challenges (and to run those things as fairly as possible). But do not let me win. I don't like when the GM snags victory away from the part for no reason, nor do I like it when he hands us victory where we should have suffered defeat.

Again this is preference. There is nothing wrong with a GM taking the approach he advocates. I just don't see it as a good universal rule or guideline for all styles of play.

The GM's job is to put up ducks for the players to knock down. Whether they can or not is where the game comes in.

The gm sets the difficulty of any challenge. Therefore, the gm decides if the pc's will win, barring swings of chance.

No challenge is equal to the pc's capabilities, and even then, they would lose half the time.

In my experience, pc win more than half the time.

The gm lets them win.

With regard to victory and defeat, it is the GMs job to referee fairly. That is the nature of the activity as a GAME. The GM can never "lose" because the adventure consists of the players vs the environment rather than the GM.

Everyone at the table can "win" if the adventure was enjoyable regardless of the fate of the characters involved. As a player I view an adventure as a win or loss based on its entertainment value instead of the survival of any characters involved.

Anyone playing a game that absolutely cannot bear to lose shouldn't be playing a game at all. To make a game interesting there must be the possibility of either victory or defeat. For this reason I will usually stop watching a football game if it looks like a complete stomping by one side or the other. Foregone conclusions are not very interesting to watch or play out.

So no, being defeated by the players in an entertaining manner is not why I run games.

Quote from: vytzka;667277Agree, for some sufficiently broad definitions of "defeat" that don't involve the GM actually playing to win at any point.

This, exactly.  The GMs characters are like that team who plays against the Globetrotters.  They're not supposed to win.  They exist to make the players look awesome.  In many games, anyway. Occasionally they exist to make the characters look pathetic and their job is to eat them one by one.  But that's just the inverse idea, so it's basically the same concept.

There are no winners or losers in an rpg

Quote from: TristramEvans;667306There are no winners or losers in an rpg

If only that were true.

If you leave the game and wish desparately that you had those hours of your life back then it was a loss.

If you leave the game and can't wait until the next session so you can play again then it was a win.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;667265From Troll in the Corner: "To put it bluntly, the GM's job is to be defeated by the players in the most entertaining way for everyone involved."

Agree? Disagree?

I always see me playing with them, not against them.

Hmm yeah I'd amend that to ' there are no winners or losers if you're playing it right'. There are bad GMs and bad players , but if you can avoid those the only victory condition is having fun