In taking stock of the games that I am currently (or will be) playing and/or running, a fairly obvious disconnect that I hadn’t realized before struck me: we tend to play the right games but they’re run by the wrong people. That is to say, we run games as a surrogate for playing them.
I’ve often lamented that I’ll likely never get to play in a Fading Suns game at any point in my life but I have run a campaign and may do so again. But why run the game when I really want to play it?
The group that I am in is currently playing D&D but our largest D&D supporter is the DM running it. Meanwhile I’m running my second Stargate campaign even though I’d much prefer to play in such a game while Martin has a strong interest in playing Burning Empires…even so much so that he’s been pining to run it for several months.
The wrong people are running these games!
Sam should be playing D&D, not running it, while I should be playing in a Stargate game, not scripting episodes every week. Conversely one of us should be running Burning Empires for Martin while someone should get off their ass and run a Star Trek or Fading Suns campaign for me. (Again, presuming there is sufficient group interest in a particular game.)
How does this juxtaposition of responsibilities happen?
Well, there’s certainly some truth to the statement that a GM should run what they enjoy. But should they run it to the extent that they’re the largest supporter of the game? To quote Spock, shouldn’t “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few…or the one?”
I’ve purported in the past that, all things being equal (system, etc), I don’t much care what game I run. I tend to derive my enjoyment from the players and their enthusiasm; a table full of excited and engaged players can energize me to an extent that the game becomes secondary. Inversely, isn’t there something of a disconnect to be the only person at the table really interested in the game to the extent that the players are playing in the game more as a public service and less because they want to?
As you drill down as to the most common reasons games end prematurely I suspect you’ll find it’s more about lack of player interest than GM interest. Advocating what you want to play while people go through the motions, hoping that they’ll garner interest, stacks the odds against you as a GM.
Now I’m not about to flail my arms about and start running the game-that-shall-not-be-named because I stumble into a group of sickos who want me to. But by the same token if, out of a group of four gamers, three love D&D and the fourth (me) really doesn’t get too much out of playing it, shouldn’t that said person — again, all things being equal — run the game? I can run D&D. I have run D&D. I’m good at running D&D.
Ultimately this may be a question of gamer maturity. Having gamed for the better part of 25 years at some level it does become more about the experience and less about the game. Asking people to run games that they outright dislike or have no interest in isn’t a winning formula. But, at the same time, if you’re at the point in your “gamer life-cycle” shouldn’t it make sense that you’re making a better experience for everyone rather than flogging your own personal gaming agenda?
What game could you run if you stretched yourself outside of your comfort zone?
I myself have tried to stretch outside my comfort zone only once, and that was to run a fantasy campaign using Decipher’s LotR-flavored Coda (with an original theme of my own devising). While I don’t want to say it was a failure, I didn’t have the storytelling tools to cope with the problems of the setting.
Here’s what I mean: in a Star Trek campaign, the problems you face, as a GM, tend to be deus ex machina: that is, the technology is so flexible and powerful that you have to be able to plan for players doing creative things with transporters and force fields and starship weapons that can vaporize whole sections of planetary landscape. Even in a genreal sense, space opera settings share the same sort of pitfalls, such as extremely high-powered personal ranged weapons and the starships that can travel at many multiples the speed of light.
My problem was, I believe, that I couldn’t adapt to a different set of theatric conventions. In other words, my fantasy campaign was more like a sci-fi campaign with a veneer of middle-age and magic. I also didn’t have the toolkit for dealing with the fantasy setting’s equivalents of deus ex machina: specifically, one character was the general of an army, basically, and he seemed intent on taking soldiers with him into every problem.
Granted, like you said above, if you can run D&D, and your players enjoy you GMing, and YOU enjoy GMing D&D, then it sounds like a good enough fit to me. In my personal experience, my group of friends have from time to time asked me to GM — but they don’t ask me to GM something specific. My friends have had experience with how I GM, and thankfully, it seems they enjoy the depth I put into story and character, no matter what the specific thematic window dressing may be.
I have to say, that I could not agree with you in 100% regarding Right Games, Wrong GM, but it’s just my opinion, which could be wrong
Hi Daniel! So what don’t you agree with? You think people should be hawking their pet game with moderate interest for the players? What’s your position on who should be running what for a group with dissimiliar interests?
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