Quote from: One Horse Town;667281The 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.

Savage, terrorist ducks, with laser-guided munitions.

-clash

Seeing as how the DM is the all powerful, there is no way to "defeat" the DM unless he or she wants it.  Not exactly a competitive game there, and thus horrible choice of words by the OP.

Like many above, I disagree. As Game Master, if all I am doing is setting up my players to win, each and every time, then there's no drama whatsoever. Without the very real threat of ultimate failure, they might as well just congratulate each other on being awesome and go home.

Disagree. It's the player's/PC's job to overcome the challenges that are placed before them. Usually in the most entertaining way for everyone involved.

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'd largely agree with this.  

Quote from: Sacrosanct;667319Seeing as how the DM is the all powerful, there is no way to "defeat" the DM unless he or she wants it.  Not exactly a competitive game there, and thus horrible choice of words by the OP.

This is mostly why I agree with it.  If the GM's job was to 'win', he could create unbeatable challenges.  The GM has hordes of millions of orcs; cults summoning elder gods, demonic incursions from other planes of existence - and more - at his fingertips.  Describing how 'Fred the Dirt Farmer' gets annihilated by a demonic incursion on his way to the dungeon isn't any less likely in a 'true sandbox' at 1st level than it is at 10th level or that it is at 20th level.  

Despite some protestations to the contrary, every DM worth his salt is modifying the environment in ways that make it a worthy (but not unbeatable challenge) to the players.  

The GM isn't guaranteed to lose - not by any stretch of the imagination.  But his goal should always be setting up situations where the players can 'win' - or if they can't, they can at least escape in memorable fashion.

Part of 'losing in the most entertaining way possible' is not trying to look like you're trying to lose.  And once the challenge is set, a 'let the dice fall where they may' mentality is entirely appropriate.  But the actual act of setting up the challenges fits this description pretty well.

I've never felt the need to modify the environment for the players. But I also don't create environments where combat is the only option

It's a GM's job to supply appropriate challenges for the players not to be expressly combative or be a loser. More just be a referee and adjudicate whatever results of the player's actions.

He dwells on a great mountain. What use to call on him? Little he cares if men live or die. Better to be silent than to call his attention to you; he will send you dooms, not fortune! He is grim and loveless, but at birth he breathes power to strive and slay into a man's soul. What else shall men ask of the gods?

Be like Crom.

Quote from: TristramEvans;667335I've never felt the need to modify the environment for the players. But I also don't create environments where combat is the only option

Sorry - 'creating' the environment.

Quote from: Bill;667290The 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.

It is true the GM decides what challenges are on the table, and this has an enormous impact on how easy it is to survive. But I still think a GM can provide very different experiences depending on why he chooses to present given encounters and what procedures he uses to deploy them. If a GM wants to he can clearly kill the party. Just keep stacking the odds against them. But choosing not to do that, doesnt mean he is letting them win. He could just be striving to present a reasonable challenge, and from there let the dice fall where they may, or he could just be trying to maintain a beliavable setting with varied threats. I think if the gm is coming at it from either of those, then his purpose is not to be defeated by the players, but to run the combats as fairly as he can and to engineer the challeneges appropriately. This is one of the reasons I am fond of random encounters.

To me, the GM letting the party win, is either only throwing challenges at the group he knows they can survive and overcome, or pulling his punches when combat gets too deadly. Personally, I prefer when the GM throw a variety of challenges, not so overwhelming that characters die left and right, but not so predictable that I know my character will survive or win a given encounter. But what I also expect is the GM will be as fair as he can about running such combats. There is an art to that because it is not something easily quantified by challenge ratings since the GM, as you point out, ultimately decides so much about the world.

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?

This isn't really a good description of the GM's job; it sounds as if the GM is supposed to "lose" to the players. If that were always the case, nobody would ever want to GM. Losing isn't fun. Being an awesome GM for an awesome group of players most definitely IS fun, though.

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?

If the party dies ... they die.

My job is to present a semi-plausible milieu that doesn't have any "why the fuck would that happen" moments, allow the PC's actions to determine the course of the session, provide sufficient foreshadowing such that the players can make reasonable plans as to where to go/what to do, and keep the action and pace of the game moving along.

Mostly disagree. For my response, take your pick of these two:

"It's the GM's job to make stuff happen."

*or*

"It's the GM's job to give the players enough rope to hang themselves."

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."

There are exceptions, but as a general rule: Yes. 99% of the time, the PCs should ultimately succeed at their objects. There will be setbacks and complications along the way, but ultimately they're going to solve the mystery; beat the bad guy; yada yada yada.

GMs who don't approach the game with the expectation that the PCs are going to generally accomplish their goals are going to be fairly atrocious GMs. They're going to create bad scenarios and they're going to run them poorly.

I'm seeing lots of people quibble by claiming that it's not really the GM who is being overcome here or that Sauron didn't lose when Frodo destroyed the One Ring; but this is pure pedantry.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;667414There are exceptions, but as a general rule: Yes. 99% of the time, the PCs should ultimately succeed at their objects. There will be setbacks and complications along the way, but ultimately they're going to solve the mystery; beat the bad guy; yada yada yada.

GMs who don't approach the game with the expectation that the PCs are going to generally accomplish their goals are going to be fairly atrocious GMs. They're going to create bad scenarios and they're going to run them poorly.

I'm seeing lots of people quibble by claiming that it's not really the GM who is being overcome here or that Sauron didn't lose when Frodo destroyed the One Ring; but this is pure pedantry.

Pffftttt....

A damn fun game can be had where Han and Chewie's players realize the mission is hopeless and fly off to greener pastures while Luke gets toasted on his impossible mission, the Empire destroys the fledgling Rebellion, and Luke's player rolls up a new character to join the Falcon's future adventures.