I am fairly fortunate. Our group rotates GMing so I get chances to run and play. My only gripe is that I don't often get to be able to play games I really want to as a player. I would love to play in an AD&D or B/X campaign but have resigned myself to having to run them if I want to play at all.

Quote from: yosemitemike on January 19, 2024, 06:23:19 PMIf I don't run the game, there won't be a game.

Hell, half the time (or so it seems), there isn't a group if the forever-DM doesn't DM, much less a game.

I like DMing and my friends usually don't, so I always end up doing it. There was about a 2 year period where I only DMed until a buddy of mine in college introduced us to Cyberpunk 2020 and I was able to play.

I can't complain, because I honestly enjoy DMing, but I do like getting to play too. It's like a prearranged marriage of convenience: I've learned to love what I've been put with.

Two Reasons:

1) I know that the games I like to play will most likely not be run by anybody else. d6 WEG Star Wars, Traveller, Mekton, Cepheus Engine, or Cyberpunk are games I'd love to play, but instead I have to run them if I want to scratch that itch. I like OSR games, but so many people are tired of fighting the D&D and Pathfinder Organized Play wonks locally that nobody wants to run them - except me.

2)

I DM alot because I like it.

I know a few DMs who just do not like being players even.

Other folk who knows. Sometimes its just because no one else wants to.

Back when we were teenagers and my group of friends was 16-18 we would rotate GM duties, but over time after a few years had passed, more and more my friends wanted me to be the one to keep running Games. I also found I enjoyed it more and felt like I put more effort into being a GM.

I found out I enjoyed it, and now have reached a point where I rarely want to play. It's far more fun for me to build a setting and then watch how PC's engage with it. How they change it, or literally burn it to the ground.

I think those of us who are Forever GMs took on the role when we were younger, because nobody else wanted to do it... and or when others did it, they often seemed... Less, I don't want to say less capable...but they just don't think in the same way those of us who have a knack for it do. Thinking of how an Adventure should have multiple ways to solve it, knowing you have to give good precise descriptions for players to make judgments on, and getting that immense sense of satisfaction when players say they can't wait for the next game.

By contrast, I understand I'm a terrible player. a Nightmare of one really... One of the rare chances I got to play recently, I ended up making an Aarakocra Wizard based off Daffy Duck. He ended up fireballing an entire town and killing most of it's citizens for insulting him. The other players were absolutely horrified, and yes, my Alignment was even Chaotic Neutral. But I literally made the horrible "Well, it's what my character would do."

I bowed out of the game after that, but the majority of players involved were playing in a game of my own at the time. They didn't stop playing in my game afterwards despite that.

Most first time GM's are uncomfortable with GMing because of their lack of experience and don't really know what to do. There are a bazillion opinions on what GMing is or requires, but very few sources of "this is how you start." Justin Alexanders book, I hear, is very good at this.

While many of us that are veteran GM's might sneer at live-plays online, for newb GM's I think the Mercer Effect is real.

The people that GM repeatedly have effectively unlocked something perma-players don't really understand. There is a joy to GMing in creating something cool and memorable with your players that you learn to derive great satisfaction from. It's not as simple as calling oneself the GM and running a game that is pass/fail. There's definitely levels to it, and principles to adhere to that can be stressed in different measure depending on the type of game one runs.

Running one-shots, or tournament play for Conventions is *vastly* different than running a sandbox campaign. Although until one does those things repeatedly, it's hard to know where the traps are in conducting the game. Genre matters, system matters, improv skills matter, prep matters, reading your players matters. Attitude matters. And all of these things vary by the individual in their own personal inclinations and views.

Of course getting to the point where *any* of those things matters assumes you've really committed yourself to learning to GM. It's an art and a skillset and most people simply don't want to commit the time and energy to learn. It's that simple.

As an aside - I do think learning to GM is a developmental process that can be outlined and codified to teach people how to do it and step up their game (so to speak) and find the niche they want to rest in as a GM. I do think the skills of learning to be a GM are nested and it demands techniques to be learned in order to progress beyond running one-shots. Again, this is a time investment.

On the plus side being a GM means that you're rarely without a game. Finding players is easy (note: I didn't say GOOD players) finding GM's is a lot harder.

I literally have the problem of being the perma-GM because my players that say they want to GM are far more interested in playing my games than running their own and trying to do emulate my perceived sprawling games and over-reaching their own skillset, rather than learning those basics and going through that process of learning.

Healthy groups should have multiple GM's that *really* want to do the job. Because those GM's will feed off one another to do better. Like anything else worthwhile, GMing (and being good at it) requires more commitment than being a player. And it's often thankless, until it isn't. But the gulf between those positions can be fairly wide.

I will rarely worry about whether I would do something better or different when I am playing vs. GMing. I enjoy playing greatly when I do get the chance. But out of my gaming group and friends, I am almost always the one who gets called on to GM. It gets old often, especially when my friends started wanting to focus on 5E so much to the exclusion of any other game. They wouldn't GM other games they have, and when the big to play something hit them soon after they started GMing 5E, they would always quit their game and ask me to run something.

Whether that means they think I am a better GM than they are or they just want to play and don't want to GM, I don't know. I just slide into the chair and take over when they quit, and always have. I try to compliment all of them on their style when they GM and tell them how much I am digging their game but it rarely makes them stick to the screen.

I guess most of my group are just players, and I am just the GM and that's how they see it working...

some people are leaders and some are followers.  It applies with RPGs.

I GM because I like having the big picture.  I don't mind playing, but a lot of players won't put in the work to GM.

The challenge as always is players who get bent out of shape when you play the rest of the world as non-static rational entities. How dare you not let them walk all over the NPCs. How dare you make the lowly hobgoblin a strong warrior race with sound military tactics. How dare you have the BBEG shoot the PCs in the head the first chance he gets instead of revealing his entire plan to them before putting them in an escapable death trap.

Luckily my groups have had at least one other who is willing to GM.

In my current group, I run about half the games, my buddy does the other half. Typically we trade off whenever one of us is either uninspired, bored, a campaign ends, someone is too busy, whatever. Any sort of experimental stuff I'll do almost every time, he sticks with D&D-type games almost exclusively.

I asked one of my other buddies if he wanted to run the next game and he said something to the effect that he didn't know how and wouldn't have any idea where to begin. This is a guy I've been playing with for twenty years, and he has played complicated wargames and boardgames since high school, so it's certainly not the rules that are a barrier. Seems like he just thinks running a game requires some sort of magical ability to do well, and he doesn't want to take the chance and fuck it up. Also if it was up to him to organize and coordinate everything, the game would never happen. His own lack of self-organization could be a contributing factor to that.

So, I guess to answer the original question, if I didn't do it, the game wouldn't happen.

Some people seem to think that running a game requires having some special, magical gift or talent to do.  As someone who has been running games for decades, I can assure that this is not the case.  Any bozo can muddle through.  I know because I have been that bozo muddling through for decades.

Quote from: yosemitemike on January 21, 2024, 07:30:42 AM
Some people seem to think that running a game requires having some special, magical gift or talent to do.  As someone who has been running games for decades, I can assure that this is not the case.  Any bozo can muddle through.  I know because I have been that bozo muddling through for decades.

How do you succeed?  Get experience.  How do you get experience?  Try and fail.

It's amazing how many people know that in their own area of expertise, but can't seem to apply it to things like learning to run a game.

Generally, if I'm not running the game then I won't be able to play the kinds of games I want to play. That's the curse of being a GM for me. I'd love to be a player and just enjoy a game but I always end up not completely satisfied unless I'm running the game myself. I realise this is a problem of me being too picky and narrowminded. But I simply can't force myself to enjoy something I'm not enjoying. And would rather not drag down a game with my lack of enjoyment.  So I always end up as the GM. People seem satisfied with the kinds of games I run or I wouldn't be able to GM and thus wouldn't be able to play.

Quote from: yosemitemike on January 21, 2024, 07:30:42 AM
Some people seem to think that running a game requires having some special, magical gift or talent to do.  As someone who has been running games for decades, I can assure that this is not the case.  Any bozo can muddle through.  I know because I have been that bozo muddling through for decades.

Actually you do need a certain something and you have it. I have seen DMs who completely lacked it and one or two who should have never been allowed near an RPG.

Some people just lack that spark to DM and some even struggle to be a player.

Others lack the flexibility needed to DM or play.