I am 59 years young and have been DM'ing for over 40 years. I DM because I love learning. I DM because I love creating. I DM because I love to entertain. For me, there is nothing better than having a player go Wow, when I reveal my magic, the goal is not to defeat the players but to entertain and challenge them.

The best moment I ever had as a DM was when my players sat staring at each other in stunned silence until one of them said "I don't know what we should do. Both options seem bad." They couldn't deduce what to do, they had to actually DECIDE. They CARED about the outcome, and they had enough information that they had to THINK about it. I got to just sit back and watch them talk it through. I felt like I won the game that day.

@BanjoSick

6 ай бұрын

I have that every session. Rarely is there a clear good choice. How did that happen only once???

@ogreboy8843

6 ай бұрын

@@BanjoSick Gosh it's fun being condescending to strangers online, isn't it? I don't know if you've noticed this, but when someone says "the best," there's usually only one of them. If someone tells you that every single entry in a category is the best one, I'd encourage you to be suspicious. To your point though, I think this is a very specific core fantasy and I think it's actually quite tricky to get the balance right. IME players often feel like they know what they're supposed to do, or if they don't they worry they've missed something. Or they dont particularly care about the stakes so they just pick a thing and move on. Or they don't have enough info, so the choice might as well be a coin flip. Or they feel like they ought to be able to find a way to have their cake and eat it too. Or they're overwhelmed by too many options and they can't sort them out. Or they can't think of even one viable approach to solving their problems. The moment I described was one where I more or less stumbled into getting all these cylinders firing at once. I've been chasing that high - with greater or lesser success - ever since.

@BanjoSick

6 ай бұрын

@@ogreboy8843Sorry, re-read my comment and I came across arrogant. My players are just hyper afraid, haha. We play Rolemaster and they are rightly so and discuss everything feverishly.

@titlowrockstar

6 ай бұрын

@ogreboy8843 congratulations on that moment! That's what I'm chasing. My party might not have the morality to make my dream come true though lol

@TheControlBlue

6 ай бұрын

@@titlowrockstar The Moral Imperative! Make them pay by making the consequences of their bad actions affect people they care about in the game.

Idk personally I think my core fantasy is being the conductor. Not the musician, but the guy who wrote or deeply studied the music and is now dancing across the podium as he leads an orchestra to produce not just his work, but a new thing more beautiful than he could have imagined in his mind’s eye. For me the reason I GM is that flow state, *during* the session, continually surprising and being surprised by the players. I live for being the shaper of the conversation. I go back and forth between having fun with prep and struggling with it. I think partially you’re right that people who live for the session struggle with prep. But, I’ve managed to keep this up for 6 years so, clearly something is keeping me around. I think a big benefit that my view has is that I don’t usually get stuck in my own head like I see some other GMs do. I’m always thinking about how something will play when it hits the table. You’ve inspired me to romanticize prepping more though, I think. Maybe instead of an arcane researcher, I am a composer 🤓

As someone who rarely plays but finds himself enthusiastically collecting and reading systems and settings and adventures, this is super affirming. For me, the fun is getting lost in these fantasy worlds (and not-so-fantasy worlds as I also love learning about ancient cultures). The game is in my head, and that's fun even if I never get to share it with anyone. So thank you for making this episode.

i love this guy, some of his ideas resonate so clearly with me, ive made them part of the way i play,

I'm glad that you post the stuff you do. It's reassuring that you are a real player/dm/gm.

This Arcane Research is what drew me into AD&D as a kid, it was so evocative and indecipherable it was real magic. Modern game design benefits from clean rules organization, but loses the Arcane Research magic of the tome itself. I encourage everyone to have at least a couple indecipherable vintage old school tomes to inspire-DMs used to have their own secret rules guides making it even more magical and opaque

It's really nice to have this framing. The time we spend at play with our minds, in our "what if" sandbox is a wonderful part of the hobby jsut as play is. This has become more clear to me since I started playing some solo games. That is play has been a place to flex my imagination and it has paid off when I do have a player session.

Beautifully put man 🐏

My man- why listening to the first few minutes, I began pondering what I want out of my real life. I stopped the video and I have some soul searching to do. I think I know what I want and who I want to be, I’ve just never articulated it to myself let alone another person. If someone were to ask me, “what do you want out of life?”, I would have a vague sense or a abstract idea, but not a clear answer. So I’m going to clarify that, sharpen my focus, and make sure my actions will take me there. Thank you for being so meta it transcends the hobby of role-playing. As a reminder (and maybe a caution, but certainly not to talk down to anyone who reads this) we must take care to balance an immersive hobby with real life.

I've struggled so much with this exact dilemma!! I now feel I've put "the session" on a pedestal and have forgotten exactly the part that keeps me wanting to be on the GM seat.

This feels so good to hear especially since I just got my Shadowdark core rules - Nothing makes me feel more like an arcane wizard than sitting with my leather bound tome and planning the next session

Nailed it Hank. My core fantasy as a DM is the creation and writing.

@phaedruslive

6 ай бұрын

I really like atmosphere. I want the game to be so thick with style and tone that you could choke on it. Like Tarkovsky's Stalker film. I think that 'feel' is how you boil the frog and get players immersed and participating in the same tone/style as the world you've presented. It also allows for things like horror or tragedy to work better, because it's as though there's an audio/visual filter affecting how the table is interpreting events and so on. Some games have a really strong aesthetic built in that does a lot of the work for you, like Mothership or Mork Borg.

That's why I love my homebrew of D100 Dungeon! Now with some Shadowdark content in it.

It's so good to see something that doesn't follow the prevailing wisdom, which is that all things tabletop roleplaying should be optimized for speed - less prep, faster prep, less time "wasted". Gamemastering for me isn't a race to get somewhere, it's really digging into things, getting into a state of flow, enjoying that arcane exploration. You articulated that state of mind very well.

this was very encouraging there really is something wonderful about just going through the stuff, thinking about it, manipulating and rearranging it. it feels like a waste when I think it will be used in a session very soon. but when I do it just to do it I feel better.

I’m less of a wizard in a tower and more of a field researcher. I want to be on the adventure with the players. Without the ‘game’, there’s no point. I research because I want to show off the fruits of my labor, not just for the joy of researching.

It's a common refrain some Game Masters might lean on: "My game" or "This is my game," especially when faced with players eager to contribute their own ideas to the worldbuilding or take the story in unexpected directions. However, I firmly believe that this mindset overlooks the true essence of what tabletop RPGs are all about. Tabletop gaming isn't, and should never be, a one-person show. It thrives on collaboration, shared storytelling, and the collective creativity of everyone at the table. The Game Master plays a unique role, yes, as a guide and referee, but they are a player in their own right. Their primary job isn't to dictate but to facilitate an engaging, dynamic world where all players, including the GM, can explore and contribute to the story's unfolding. When we say, "My game," it can unintentionally gatekeep and stifle the imaginative potential of the players. Instead, embracing the mindset of "Our game" opens up a world of possibilities. It allows for a richer, more immersive experience that is shaped by the contributions of everyone involved. Every player gets a turn, not just to act within the story but to help weave that story's very fabric. GMs, while it's understandable to have a vision for your campaign, remember that the most memorable and rewarding sessions often emerge from the unexpected twists and collaborative storytelling moments that your players bring to the table. Loosening the reins and adopting a more collaborative approach doesn't mean relinquishing control; it means enriching the game in ways you might never have anticipated. In the end, the goal is to ensure that everyone at the table is entertained, engaged, and invested in the world you're building together. The game isn't just for the players or the GM-it's a shared adventure where everyone contributes, and that's what makes it truly magical.

People who write adventures, design games, and create campaign settings are GODS! We make UNIVERSES! We create LIFE!

I'm a musician and a DM. I definitely live for the live performance of the play session. I don't lament the wizard-with-books part of DMing. I do feel I failed when the gig doesn't go as well as the rehearsal.

Even though I find myself being the GM, what Hankerin described is not my core fantasy. I'd say my core fantasy is more akin to the game designer, where I want to kitbash great concepts and mechanics out of other TTRPGs into something else and (hopefully) make a new awesome system. The whole thing of rehearsing what NPCs are going to say seems to smack of having a story already prepared, waiting to be launched at the players. As the GM, I want to be as surprised as anyone else when the dice roll produces a particular result! "Oh, they rolled under the TN? Hmm, how can I make the PC's life more complicated now? Or, what heavy cost will the PC pay in order to get what they want?" Playing to find out what happens is my GM core fantasy and, as Hankerin pointed out, GMs who have long dry spells of not running games for a group that is down with that does burn them out, because playing is life.

The Lore Master GM/DM

This was a really great and enlightening episode. Loved it! Especially how creative OSR style problem solving is similar to more crunchy RPGs: it’s all about synergy and release of tension

On long drives I will speech to text myself so much world ideas and mechanic ideas. It’s nice to know I’m not the only one. I only DM’d one short campaign that didn’t finish due to life getting in the way. Love your stuff

We need a word for "going through story and content" to better counter synergy. Not that synergy is bad in itself of course, but to allow people to better know what they want and how to prepare for that! Anyway, good content sir! o7

@EdwinSteiner

6 ай бұрын

Also, "going through story and content" sounds very much like passive reception of pre-existing content. I'd say the story-related core fantasy is more about discovering ever deeper layers of story that emerge at the table from the collaboration of players and GM. For me as a GM some of the greatest moments are when my players invent completely new options based on the substrate I provided but still everything fits together.

@chrisrobinson196

6 ай бұрын

How about 'imagineering'? 'Visioning' also sort of works, but imagineering reflects the work involved better.

@davidmc8478

6 ай бұрын

I think that would be “unitary”, a single unit activity to solve a single problem or node. A better comparison is probably systemic vs reductionist, where systems theory deals with relationship between phenomena while reductionist theory deals with the individual parts themselves.

@vc8963

6 ай бұрын

5e Publisher LOTR-like save the world campaigns vs Crawls (Hex or Dungeon)-or simple “Save the World” vs “West Marches”

@taylregene

6 ай бұрын

Drama. I find that people who aren’t there for the synergy are usually there for the drama. They want the sweet sweet character drama, or the suspense of not knowing what will happen, or the dramatic irony, ykwim. They’re there to be part of a communal story, but not necessarily for the combos or the problem solving.

This was a huge lightbulb moment for me, I absolutely adore the creative noodling process, the delving and pondering. Good stuff!

These intros man... 🔥🔥🔥

I found this podcast on Spotify! I know what I'm going to be listening to on my commute for the next few weeks 😁🙌

The artist vs musician idea is very interesting. I think that, it could be better phrased as creator vs performer. Though I think that your conclusion that GM's all live for the creation and not the performance is just you generalizing your personal preferences. (And to be fair, musicians don't all fit neatly into performer either). End of the day, I think it's like a sliding scale where one extreme end is the creator and the other end is the performer, and everyone is somewhere in the middle but likely leans towards one or the other.

The second half send me for a bit of a twist… ok yeah the DM’s cord fantasy is defiantly a researcher/ creator Similar to a composer, where I might say the players are more like the instrument players I think you are right about the feeling of awesome being a drive for many players and I think synergy is something all players look for to some degree in and out of combat. Core fantasy is important to establish as a group taking into account all the people playing dms and players. Love the podcast thanks

True that!

You always hit the nail on the head.

100% agree

Interesting.

Finally something where I can disagree with you. I don't think that is true, it's a skill but I do not think it is our core fantasy. Otherwise rules-lite RPGs would never have DMs, people would just dream up stories and rules rather than be at the table. That and I think you are not taking the social element into account, Storytelling only exists if there is a people to listen to it. There is some real parasocial element in making stories that no one will ever hear..

@Runehammer1

6 ай бұрын

looking back on this cast, I think table time is so implicit to my lifestyle, it was an assumed premise! :D