#wimethoughts

[awfenticwimes]

going to talk about the current twitter ttrpg discourse over here because my thoughts cannot be constrained to a measly 250 characters.

so, first off, i want to clarify that i am goingn to make generalizations, and that ofc there will be exceptions to things i say. none of this is absolute, and also, i will be mostly talking under the lens of both the games i have most experience gm’ing and also the games most widely run: dnd and dnd-likes, so if things i say don’t apply to the game you have in mind, that’s fine. good even, but it’s not what’s being discussed then

so, first off, no. as a gm you should not see yourself as a unilateral totalitarian godbeing that can dole out decrees to the lesser, measly pc’s whose only options are relent to your rule or suffer banishment. that’s silly. however, the opposite end that i keep seeing on twitter of “the gm is just another player, with no unique reach or authority than anyone else at the table” is equally untrue, not for the silly reason of “well the gm does the lion’s share of the work thus they deserves a little executive power as a treat :>” that’s also silly. ttrpgs are not meritocracies. a wizard doesn’t have more power over table practices than a fighter just because that class generally has more legwork to put into it.

the gm, to me, is a player the same as the rest, yes, but also they first and foremost are the referee. the arbitrator. they do, ultimately, get final say in a lot of things. how the rules work, how the rules can be stretched and broken, who the party meets, and what they see. the only possible way the gm would have equal power to all the players is if all players equally shared the role as gm, which is not an invalid way of playing but it definitely is not the norm

there’s of course plenty of other important differences between pc and gm (mostly involving the ways the gm can cheat, fudging roles, altering stats, the quantum trolls etc) but whether you like that or how much a gm should do that is dicecourse for another day. i only bring it up to further my point that a gm is not “just another player” but a “player+”

however, there is of course, always a caveat.

as a gm, yes. the world is yours. the towns, the dungeons, the dragons, and everything inbetween is 100% your domain. what isn’t. is the Players.

The Players (and the characters they create) are theirs. sorry, and they should get final say over most everything that falls under that umbrella. This of course is not giving players free reign to run rampant, of course. as (once again) they are fully constrained to the rules. they can offer suggestion for exceptions, or homebrew, but that would need the gm stamp of approval. The character is theirs, but changes to the rules is outside of their hands. It doesn’t matter if you don’t like gnomes, or edgy evil rogues, or whatever. they get to do that. you as gm can say, try to dissuade players from doing things you don’t like, but cannot force their hands, that’s an overstepping of boundaries.

man that was a lot of words. i don’t have a concluding paragraph sorry. this isn’t high school. that’s all i want to say. feel free to agree or disagree