Saturday, August 16, 2008

Brain... broken... must... recalibrate...

Modern day RPG sensibilities... I don't get it.

Someone on rpg.net came up with a wacky "Should We Pay the GM?" thread, with the idea that the GM does a lot of work to make a game happen... so should he be compensated?

(As a GM I say... PAY ME!)

(or... not.)

Anyway. What's interesting is the mentality revealed in a couple of the responses.

Do I get a refund if you kill my character?

If I kill a character do I owe that player a refund?

The message there, I guess, is that the GM has completely fucked up to the point of incompetence if a character dies.

This on the heels of the complete flame-out that my Players like it when their characters get SCREWED! post caused there. 180 responses on how I'm an asshole because I think that players can enjoy when their character dies.

To sum up my feelings on the matter:

When PCs have plot immunity, the game sucks.

6 comments:

  1. Just as another data point, I've gotten vibrant applause when a con session has ended in a TPK and a table full of happy players when one guy barely survived.

    Personally, if money is going to start changing hands I think the GM should get to fine players every time they die. But one would have to trust the GM to play fair, which is apparently a difficult task for the modern roleplayer.

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  2. I never got behind the crazy notion (which arose some time in the late 80s/early nineties as far as I can tell), that GMing is a chore and that a GM would have to "put up" with players which he has no respect for.

    A good session is as much fun for the GM as for any other player.

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  3. Yeah, that rpg.net thread you started is just...weird.

    I love it when one of my characters dies in a cool, funny or brilliant way. My old group and I used to have a file of interesting deaths that our characters had succumbed to.

    Not that we deliberately played our characters to be killed - just that they sometimes died and it was more often than not a glorious or ignominous death when they did.

    Sometimes people say that they don't like character death because it means they have to spent time creating another one. As if that's a bad thing! If one character dies I'll make sure my next one is a lot better.

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  4. All the bitching and moaning that has gone up among would-be DMs has created a sentiment among players that they're desperately needed and irreplaceable. That somehow they deserve to be catered to because, well, without them DMs wouldn't get to play their game.

    Kill the player and punt their ass. I ask no price, I promise no service.

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  5. I wouldn’t mind hiring a full-time GM. It’s near the top of my list of things to do if I ever win the lottery. (Which is just a figure of speech since I don’t play the lottery.)

    I wouldn’t want to be paid to be a GM, though. That’d make it feel like a job. I’ve already decided which of the things I enjoy doing to sacrifice for money. ^_^

    “Sometimes people say that they don't like character death because it means they have to spent time creating another one. As if that's a bad thing!”

    One of my friends always has at least another PC ready to go whenever his current one dies. Just because he can’t help but come up with character ideas.

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  6. When PCs have plot immunity, the game sucks

    Amen, I speak from experience. I've literally fallen asleep at one of these games when I figured out I could never possibly die.

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