Quote from: Black Vulmea;952177who doesn't want to play with ripped, rock-hard gamers . . . yeah, maybe not the best analogy, but you get the point.

Well, you do live in Long Beach.

Quote from: CRKrueger;952182Well, you do live in Long Beach.

So close to the ocean I can see Ripples.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;952177For someone who agrees with my basic premise, you seem to be strangely interested in coming at me because . . . what, it's cool to disagree with the angry guy?

It's fun to go after the guy who won't shut the hell up.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;952177A word of advice: I'm a fucking monkey throwing my shit - if you pick it up and throw it back, guess what that makes you? A fuckwit throwing the monkey's shit back in the cage.

Honestly, that's the most intelligent thing you've said.  And since you admit you have -nothing- to contribute but shit... ignore.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;952177creativity is a muscle that gets stronger the harder it's worked,

And as far as being a referee, practice makes perfect.  I personally am tired of the notion that a referee has to be some brilliant savant.  My first ever D&D dungeon level was shit, but my friends put up with it.  After 44 years of practice, I'm pretty good at it.

Granted, this forum is mostly blessedly free of the "But being a GM is HARD!" shit, but damn, it's a pervasive attitude.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;952177Of course not, particularly given some of the really intriguing stuff that's available out there right now, but in my experience the best shit that's being published is coming from the DIY crew, not 'Big Gaming,' and the DIY releases tend to come it drips, not a firehose. They leave mental space for gamers to fill in the blanks of their own campaigns. They inspire, rather than replace, imagination and the creative impulse because they are limited in their reach.

I agree that there's no need for the firehose approach to supplements that we use to see and it encourages DMs to create their own stuff or homebrew from bits and pieces of the huge back catalogue increasingly available. I think releasing adventures at a slower pace encourages people to actually play them instead of just collect them.

Have you read or played CoS or Out of the Abyss? I think they're both great toolkits for constructing adventures. We played CoS to completion but I've just been using bits and pieces of OotA. They're easily as good if not better than what the OSR has produced so far I think. DCO, Yoon-Suin and Hydra Cooperative are my favourite OSR settigs and adventures presently although I need to pick up Red Tide too. Want to get a Yoon-Suin campaign going, with some Oriental Adventure classes.

Still not seeing many examples of excessive swag attached to RPGs. Most RPGs are still distributed via pdf and even D&D has moved towards non-mini play as the default. Invisible Sun is the one big exception but that is such an outlier it is like using Kingdom Death as representative of board games.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;951939The fuck there is. FATE Core is a gawdamn brick - it's 'lite' only in comparison to the rules-bloated horrors that gamers of the Aughts and early Teens were raised on.

Im probably one of the few people who has never actually seen FATE. Whats the page count then?

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;952211Granted, this forum is mostly blessedly free of the "But being a GM is HARD!" shit, but damn, it's a pervasive attitude.

True. But for some its just not their thing. But the main point was that there are DMs who just are not the creative types and never will be. One of our local DMs struggles with this at every turn. Modules and setting books remove some of the burden. Or at least put some blinders on the horse as it were so they can flex a little but not get paniced.

BX D&D is still my go-to to hand to a new DM as it gives you a skeleton framework to build on and make your own and the module pack in is fairly open ended and is a continuation of the rules section too.

I do not like Mystarra at all as it hammers down everything. It feels stifling and crowded.

Quote from: Omega;952242True. But for some its just not their thing. But the main point was that there are DMs who just are not the creative types and never will be.

Or just time constraints.

I'm a big believer in GM prep.  I've played in several games where the GM claimed that they could GM on the fly... and they were all terrible.  Maybe others can do it well - but I've never seen it.

Adventures do 95% of the prep for you and are big time savers.

I use to improv DM as a teen. Not sure how good it actually was. The players seemed to enjoy it but they were probably just glad to be playing D&D. But it has made me comfortable when things go 'off book.'

The GM for the ICONS & Mutants and Masterminds Third Edition group I was in would spend several hours each and every week preparing, only for us to throw everything completely off the rails and forcing her to improv.  I suppose that may be why we haven't seen her since September...

I tend to fall somewhere in the middle, I like a solid frame to hang things from but where it goes from there depends heavily on the players.

Are railroading GMs forcing players through their "chose your own adventure" story plots just the norm these days?

Because for me, being a GM means pretty much all improv, all the time.

Quote from: Tristram Evans;952261Are railroading GMs forcing players through their "chose your own adventure" story plots just the norm these days?

Because for me, being a GM means pretty much all improv, all the time.

I think that's what you get when the only inspiration their getting is scripted adventures. I was the same when I started but as I had more varied inspiration (settings) to choose from I got more inspired.

Quote from: Tristram Evans;952261Are railroading GMs forcing players through their "chose your own adventure" story plots just the norm these days?

Because for me, being a GM means pretty much all improv, all the time.

Prepping =/= railroading.

Quote from: Charon's Little Helper;952265Prepping =/= railroading.

Clarification:

Prepping for what the PCs will do in their adventures = railroading
Prepping the world for the PCs to interact with =/= railroading