Latest / Sessions Canceled / Is The "Forever GM" Actually A Problem?: Ep. 162

Transcript

Is The "Forever GM" Actually A Problem?: Ep. 162 · Sessions Canceled

• 0:15
  All right, everybody. So we were actually all lined up
• 0:18
  today. And then right before we
• 0:20
  started, the GM started talking, and that talking turned into
• 0:23
  ranting, and that ranting turned into screaming about he's the
• 0:28
  only one whoever wants to run games and he wants to be a
• 0:31
  player, and that we're contributing to the forever GM
• 0:34
  problem. Really, we were all kind of
• 0:36
  confused because everyone in the table ran games.
• 0:38
  We were just kind of not really sure what he was screaming
• 0:41
  about, but he was screaming. And then he packed up and went
• 0:43
  home. So I guess sessions.
• 0:46
  Cancelled. I just, I, I'm, I just started
• 0:56
  imagining if that actually happened to me in real life,
• 0:58
  like said, somebody just lost their shit and it was just like,
• 1:01
  fuck it, I'm taking my books and leave it.
• 1:03
  And just like start like that's a lot.
• 1:08
  There's a lot going on there. No, 100% because you'd just be
• 1:11
  like, we all run games at this table.
• 1:14
  What is he talking about? Like you can't, You wouldn't.
• 1:18
  You'd get mad more than anything else.
• 1:19
  You'd just be like you. The confusion would turn to
• 1:21
  anger. Like why are you screaming?
• 1:23
  What are you yelling? I mean, for for our particular
• 1:26
  group of people, yes, but like, I think even if it was a case
• 1:32
  that they were the only person that were at games, I'd still be
• 1:34
  like, well, that was out of nowhere.
• 1:37
  Like I. Don't know, like you can also be
• 1:40
  just like, why are you yelling? It's 6:30 in the afternoon.
• 1:44
  What the fuck is wrong? It's it's, it's too early.
• 1:50
  It's too late for this. I'm going to say too early.
• 1:51
  I can't talk. Yeah, it's fine.
• 1:58
  He's. He's typing.
• 1:59
  He's typing. No look that my brain's been
• 2:01
  cooked. Look the the the fee Boyd is
• 2:03
  texting me. Apologies.
• 2:06
  You can't. Don't, don't, don't perpetuate
• 2:09
  this. Don't do it.
• 2:10
  No, you don't get to fucking sign out.
• 2:12
  No, you people don't get to say that's me with this fucking joke
• 2:20
  despite the fact that leader has actively threatened to murder
• 2:23
  you for. I that's what I'm saying.
• 2:26
  I'm saying don't be like me, be better.
• 2:28
  Don't. No problem.
• 2:30
  Oh, I see, I see how it is rules for thee but not for me,
• 2:34
  apparently. No, I'm admitting I shouldn't do
• 2:38
  it either. I just can't help myself.
• 2:43
  Probably not. OK, then I.
• 2:44
  Don't want that fucking. That's what I'm saying.
• 2:48
  You should stop. Then you set a good example.
• 2:51
  Oh my God, I'm a good example that you will not follow.
• 2:56
  There's a chance. Is there?
• 3:00
  Yeah, I didn't say it was a high chance.
• 3:02
  I said there's HR, right? OK, so you're telling.
• 3:04
  Me there's a chance. 0.00000000019 is not a great
• 3:11
  fucking chance. Looks like a 1%.
• 3:15
  I I like that you're not arguing for like A5 Ten, 1%.
• 3:22
  I'm not going to go there. I know how I am.
• 3:28
  When I have a joke, I stick to it.
• 3:30
  Just like Deez Nuts. It's crazy that he made a Deez
• 3:35
  Nuts note in referencing the fact that he made these nuts
• 3:38
  notes, these nuts jokes, these. Nuts jokes, Deez notes.
• 3:44
  Brother, my day has been unbelievable. 3 words Oh my God
• 3:52
  brilliant start OK well almost 5 minutes in welcome back to the
• 3:59
  session scheduled podcast where it's me and Josh Yeah this man
• 4:08
  always says give us time to introduce ourselves and then
• 4:10
  just leaves me hanging in the dead air.
• 4:11
  That's. I I don't the way you said it
• 4:14
  made it seem like I was supposed to say like something else or
• 4:17
  like. A high I don't I.
• 4:19
  Was. I was confused.
• 4:20
  I was. About to flip this table, I'm
• 4:22
  sorry. There's no table.
• 4:25
  There's my big ass L desk with my several $1000 computer on it.
• 4:29
  I'm about to flip this table. I mean, I'm not there so I
• 4:33
  wouldn't recommend it. All right, then I will go to
• 4:34
  your house and flip your team. Also rude, usually assured
• 4:42
  destruction. Anyway, we're back this week and
• 4:47
  Josh is back from the the mountains and while he was away.
• 4:53
  I was on the beach. I don't.
• 4:54
  Oh OK, fair enough, but while he was away at the beach?
• 4:56
  Why'd you say the mountains? Wait, what?
• 4:58
  Because my brain auto corrected to Vermont despite the fact that
• 5:01
  we're in fucking August. I was going to say no,
• 5:03
  definitely not. But in that time I didn't do my
• 5:07
  homework. I I really had nothing planned.
• 5:09
  So I went on the good old Reddit.
• 5:11
  I feel like we should stop admitting to this.
• 5:15
  I look. I feel like, I feel like we
• 5:18
  shouldn't say whether we've done homework or not, we should just
• 5:20
  have the times where we don't do homework and just pretend like
• 5:23
  we did. I think it's funnier when we
• 5:26
  just admit that we had homework and didn't do it, you know, It
• 5:29
  really brings, it makes us feel really like casual.
• 5:32
  It makes us feel like we're one of the people, you know, even
• 5:35
  though we have less than hundreds of fibers. 3 short
• 5:41
  baby. 3 short. 3 short baby but yeah I didn't do my homework.
• 5:44
  And then panicking 2 days ago to look for a topic I browsed the
• 5:49
  the ye old Reddit, the dark scape I found.
• 5:53
  I found a discussion that kind of irked me on a personal level
• 5:58
  because he spiraled. I did.
• 6:01
  I did spiral and I wrote 2 full pages about it in paragraph
• 6:05
  format. So homework done, just really
• 6:08
  late, just like high school. Now we're going to get into it.
• 6:12
  Speak for. Yourself on that one.
• 6:14
  What? Late homework in high school.
• 6:17
  Oh no, I did every homework assignment the day it was due 15
• 6:21
  minutes before the class it was due and in that one situation
• 6:25
  that I talked about on podcast during the class that it was due
• 6:30
  under my desk without walking looking at what I was typing.
• 6:34
  I hate that deeply. Look, you know what's that
• 6:41
  saying? Like lazy people are the biggest
• 6:43
  innovators or something like that.
• 6:46
  Oh, I thought it was. Given enough time and
• 6:49
  desperation, anything will be turned into a bong.
• 6:54
  That is also a good one. And very true.
• 6:59
  Yeah. Can I just say by the way,
• 7:03
  Speaking of I, this is a, this is a stupid tangent, but I don't
• 7:06
  know, you might appreciate it. So like I was on vacation.
• 7:10
  So yeah, we were, we were passing around Speaking of the
• 7:12
  weeds, the devil's lettuce, we were passing around the bowl and
• 7:17
  I done committed the party sin twice in a row.
• 7:21
  No. So, you know, you got the bowl,
• 7:24
  So it's, you know, the, the, the cush as you will is kind of
• 7:27
  sitting, you know, loosely on top.
• 7:32
  Don't blow out which having the pipe in your hand because then
• 7:39
  all of the weed. Flex just weaned.
• 7:40
  Into the air and I was hammered so I didn't pull it away from my
• 7:47
  mouth fast enough before I breathed out.
• 7:49
  So I blew the weed the the smoldering weed particles
• 7:52
  everywhere. Twice onto myself by the way.
• 7:58
  Done Ash myself. Anyway, I just, I don't know, it
• 8:05
  was really I was having a moment.
• 8:11
  That just reminds me of when we were at your house and I think
• 8:16
  was it you at Crystal that I like bumped into and the glass
• 8:19
  just fell and shattered all over the.
• 8:22
  Stairs. Oh, that was me yeah, you broke
• 8:24
  my fucking my new wine glass. I was so pissed I.
• 8:27
  I broke nothing. You're the one who dropped it.
• 8:31
  But no, you look on our faces as we both looked down at the glass
• 8:34
  and looked back up at each other and me laughing and you just
• 8:39
  completely deadpan. I was.
• 8:41
  Deeply saddened I just bought that fucking thing.
• 8:47
  I bought it in Salem. I haven't a bad habit of
• 8:50
  breaking glassware that you just purchased.
• 8:55
  Look, you know I'll miss that sweet potato vodka.
• 8:59
  Yo I forgot about that one. I didn't buy any of this year.
• 9:06
  What? I forgot we just thought about
• 9:10
  it just now. It's fine.
• 9:12
  Make another 4 hour drive down to Cape May. 4 hour trip.
• 9:16
  Yeah. Anyway, we're way off topic.
• 9:22
  So off topic, not even 10 minutes in, so proud of us.
• 9:30
  Now, as you may have, yeah, as you may have been able to guess
• 9:33
  from our my once again, subpar hold open, the topic for today
• 9:40
  is 1 near and dear to my heart, someone who is the forever GM in
• 9:44
  my group. Is the forever GM narrative
• 9:48
  real? And if it is, does it need to
• 9:52
  stop? Do we need to stop perpetuating
• 9:55
  that narrative? Stop.
• 9:57
  Get some help. And like I said, I found this
• 10:02
  quite the thread on on Reddit and a lot of points in this
• 10:07
  thread that I fundamentally disagree with because it's more
• 10:10
  nuanced than that. Surprise, surprise, isn't it
• 10:12
  always? So I figured, fuck it, we're
• 10:15
  going to talk about it today. Do you think the idea of it
• 10:19
  being called a thread is being somewhat lost to time?
• 10:26
  Maybe right. Maybe.
• 10:29
  Yeah. Well, so because threads were
• 10:32
  like. Threads come from forums.
• 10:35
  They do come from forums, but threads were like, a big thing
• 10:39
  on Tumblr, which is basically defunct now.
• 10:43
  Like, people still use it, but like, not really, you know.
• 10:48
  Yeah, you get like. I know somebody who uses it
• 10:52
  every day. Is it the missus?
• 10:56
  It is. Well, I mean, look, she was to
• 11:00
  her own admission. What do they call them?
• 11:03
  A a super. What is it Super Hulak, Yes,
• 11:10
  yeah, usually one of those she's a super Hulak early.
• 11:12
  So like that made that Tracks is the only other person I know who
• 11:15
  still actively uses. Well, yeah, it was.
• 11:17
  We got to give her credit was. Right.
• 11:19
  The only person I know that still uses Twitter was also one
• 11:22
  of those. So like, you know, there seems
• 11:26
  to be a brand, that's all I'm saying.
• 11:30
  But those are really big on Tumblr, which again, now almost
• 11:33
  defunct. And like Reddit uses them And
• 11:37
  it's in the exact same format of right, like of like truncated
• 11:40
  lists that that shift inwards with indents, but it doesn't
• 11:45
  feel like it a lot of the time. And Discord has threads.
• 11:48
  We're so fucking off topic again.
• 11:51
  But those don't feel like threads.
• 11:53
  No discord definitely feels different.
• 11:57
  Odd. Anyway, to the point.
• 12:01
  I'm not going to read this whole paragraph, but we will leave a.
• 12:05
  Link. It's not actually that long.
• 12:07
  OK, fine, I don't. Know it's that long?
• 12:11
  O PS Post says the forever GM narrative has to die.
• 12:16
  Both here and in other places. I constantly read about people
• 12:20
  complaining that they are a forever GM, talking about how
• 12:23
  much work it is and how they can never enjoy being a player.
• 12:26
  And I think the whole narrative surrounding it is a bit of a
• 12:29
  self fulfilling prophecy. People complain so much about
• 12:32
  having to GM that people think if they start GM ING they won't
• 12:36
  have any fun. But GM ING can and should be
• 12:39
  fun. If we make it out to be this
• 12:42
  chore and service that you provide for their people, of
• 12:45
  course less people will be interested in doing it.
• 12:47
  Which of course leads to people complaining about being forever
• 12:50
  GMs staying that way. Personally, I feel that the
• 12:54
  whole narrative has has led me to doubting myself whether I
• 12:57
  should want to be a player more often.
• 12:59
  I got over it. Well I I sorry I got over it.
• 13:03
  I don't want to be a player most of the time.
• 13:06
  I far prefer prefer being AGM the the the grammar.
• 13:11
  The sentence structure here is not it, but none the less the
• 13:13
  whole the whole vibe you can get when people talk about GM ING a
• 13:17
  lot of the time is really negative and I think that needs
• 13:19
  to stop. Of course, there's also an
• 13:21
  aspect of the game design here where some games are really bad
• 13:25
  about offloading a bunch of work onto the GM even though it's
• 13:28
  said to be a group effort. Most recently I noticed this
• 13:31
  with Daggerhart putting both the session Zero and safety tool
• 13:34
  parts in the GM section, despite there no being no reason why
• 13:37
  this can't be a group effort. So do you think this is an issue
• 13:40
  and what do you think should be done to change the situation?
• 13:43
  Small thing that I'm going to mention here, Session zero and
• 13:47
  safety tools are the G Ms. responsibility.
• 13:51
  I would. Say they're the G Ms.
• 13:53
  responsibility to facilitate. Yes, yes.
• 13:57
  Not necessarily, not necessarily the G Ms. responsibility to be
• 14:03
  the sole decider of, but to facilitate.
• 14:06
  I didn't like kind of like how the, you know, the host of the,
• 14:14
  you know, the business meeting has to get the meeting going
• 14:17
  kind of thing. Yes, but no.
• 14:27
  No, I mean, yeah, I I'm basically saying what you were
• 14:29
  like, yeah, I disagree that this person has an issue with that
• 14:32
  particular thing. I think that's a weird thing to
• 14:34
  take it umbrage with. Yeah, so to this end, to those
• 14:38
  of you who might not know what I'm talking about, what is the
• 14:42
  forever GM narrative? Basically, it's that many groups
• 14:47
  maintain one GM that remains as the GM for the entirety of that
• 14:52
  group's time together as a party, while the other players
• 14:56
  remain exclusively as players for that time together.
• 14:59
  And the GM is often left feeling burnt out or underrepresented, A
• 15:06
  potentially a little unappreciated in how hard they
• 15:10
  work. And given that they just want to
• 15:11
  be a player sometimes. Is this a real thing?
• 15:17
  Sort of, you know, like a lot of things, it's and much like
• 15:23
  Josh's earlier sort of op-ed piece, it's a little more
• 15:26
  complex than that, in my opinion.
• 15:30
  I wrote in truth here in in my opinion, the situation stems
• 15:34
  from like a deeply multi faceted argument about player versus GM
• 15:38
  dynamics. And there's a lot of fallacies
• 15:42
  that get involved in that and like purposeful and accidental
• 15:46
  like, which then also leads into a talk about like general
• 15:50
  motivation and willingness to interact with the game or any
• 15:54
  game. If we're going to use this as a
• 16:02
  base though, just the arguments presented here and some of the
• 16:05
  comments underneath, I think we can deconstruct the argument
• 16:09
  into a pretty basic or versus against paradigm and compare
• 16:14
  those two opposing points to see which one turns out to be more
• 16:17
  logic based in its conclusion. And like, I'm to be clear, this
• 16:23
  person, this post is written from the perspective of somebody
• 16:26
  who participates more on the GM side than the player side, to
• 16:29
  their own admission. And yeah, I'm not 100% sure why
• 16:37
  they are doubting themselves. I like, again, that's kind of
• 16:41
  what makes this more multifaceted than just it is or
• 16:44
  it isn't because typically the forever GM thing is not about
• 16:47
  doubting yourself as AGM. It's about saying, God, I just
• 16:51
  want to fucking break sometimes. So it's a little odd, like the,
• 16:55
  the, the narrative here sort of separates from what I think it
• 17:01
  should be versus what the OP thinks is that, you know,
• 17:04
  there's a conversation we can have about that.
• 17:07
  The assertation that the narrative should die because of
• 17:10
  its suffusion sort of creates this weird Uroboros effect.
• 17:14
  Because it tries. You know, I worded that really
• 17:19
  weird. Yeah, I was.
• 17:22
  I was. I was.
• 17:22
  I wasn't sure where you would go with that.
• 17:24
  I'm gonna be honest, you lost me a little bit.
• 17:27
  He's basic. The OP is basically saying that
• 17:29
  the narrative is creating this sort of never ending cycle of
• 17:34
  GM's complaining about being players.
• 17:36
  The feud players who become GM's get stuck in that loop and they
• 17:40
  complain about being players and you sort of lose the numbers as
• 17:45
  you go down the line in this sort of like snake eating its
• 17:47
  own tail situation. It's a catch 22 situation.
• 17:51
  The the the the people who are GM ING are complaining that
• 17:56
  they're trapped as forever GMs, but the fact that they complain
• 17:59
  about being forever GMs makes other players not want to try in
• 18:03
  GM. So ergo, they get stuck as the
• 18:05
  forever GM longer. Yeah.
• 18:08
  So it's a it's a, it's a catch 22 is what it is.
• 18:11
  It's like, you know, to neither side wants to give.
• 18:16
  I don't even know though, to be honest.
• 18:19
  I don't actually think what this person is complaining about is
• 18:22
  the idea of the forever GMI really feel like the problem
• 18:28
  that this person is actually having is the idea that GM ING
• 18:34
  is like. I think the I think what they're
• 18:39
  actually annoyed about is the assumption or the cultural vibe
• 18:44
  that GM ING is more of a chore than being a player is.
• 18:50
  I think that's really the thing they're taking umbrage with.
• 18:53
  Like they're looking at the forever GM aspect of it.
• 18:58
  Essentially what I'm saying is they're getting, they're
• 19:00
  diagnosing A symptom. They're not actually diagnosing
• 19:03
  the 'cause I think the cause is actually this mentality that GM
• 19:08
  ING is a chore and GM ING is deeply difficult and GM ING is
• 19:12
  deeply, you know, requires this heavy, heavy investment and all
• 19:17
  these things. And I think that mentality is
• 19:20
  then feeding into the symptom that is the forever GM problem.
• 19:25
  So right, I think they're almost misidentifying what they're mad
• 19:28
  about. Right.
• 19:30
  And that's, that's kind of what I meant to say.
• 19:31
  I probably didn't say it as well.
• 19:33
  But the unfortunate fact of the matter is, is that while it
• 19:40
  might not be a chore, it is undeniable that the GM has a
• 19:47
  higher workload than the players.
• 19:49
  Like that's just the facts, you know what I mean?
• 19:53
  The players know most of the time to do anything.
• 19:58
  I would say most of the time. I would I would go as far as say
• 20:02
  the vast majority of the. Majority of the time, but I've
• 20:07
  seen a couple of instances here and there where you could argue
• 20:10
  it's much more equal. Do you have a for instance?
• 20:15
  I have heard tell that Burning Wheel for example is
• 20:19
  surprisingly easy to GM mostly because the prep of that game is
• 20:26
  essentially just you respond to the player like all of your prep
• 20:31
  is just player did. XI will respond with Y and like
• 20:36
  that's all you end up doing in that game most of the time.
• 20:39
  And as long as you keep pushing against the players traits
• 20:43
  because they have bonds, flaws and something else.
• 20:48
  I forget what they call them in Burning Wheel, and it's like as
• 20:52
  long as you as the GM just keep pushing against those, the game
• 20:55
  will almost kind of play itself a little bit in the same way
• 21:00
  that is when you are playing Apocalypse World.
• 21:05
  As long as you just follow the narrative, the game almost plays
• 21:08
  itself a little bit. It's kind of a similar thing
• 21:11
  actually. I would say Apocalypse World,
• 21:13
  the workload is pretty close to even between players and GMs.
• 21:18
  Pretty close. Maybe not 100% because you would
• 21:21
  you could argue that setting up the threat map slash fronts is a
• 21:26
  little bit more work, but pretty minuscule amount of like not
• 21:34
  that much more work, let's put it that way.
• 21:36
  Well, so I, I would say even in in the Apocalypse world
• 21:39
  situation, you as the GM still have to, you know, you're not
• 21:44
  prepping in encounters, you're not prepping combat, but you are
• 21:48
  laying out steps to the story in a way that your players are not
• 21:52
  right. You are reacting to them, but
• 21:55
  you are doing a level of preparatory work to give them
• 21:58
  things to act against so you can react to them.
• 22:01
  Right. But I would argue that your
• 22:04
  effort, the effort that you're putting in in terms of making
• 22:10
  plans for where the narrative goes is roughly equivalent to
• 22:14
  the amount of effort that the players are putting in in terms
• 22:17
  of how their characters are going to think about and, or
• 22:20
  react and, or what their character is going to do next.
• 22:24
  Like, it's not you're thinking about it for the world and the
• 22:28
  players are thinking about it for their character.
• 22:30
  But the amount of like mental load is actually not that split
• 22:35
  in my opinion. This is assuming this is with a
• 22:38
  slight assumption in that you're talking about invested players
• 22:42
  and an invested GM, right? Ever Assuming everyone's equally
• 22:46
  invested in the in the campaign. Obviously if you have a player
• 22:49
  who doesn't give a fuck or AGM who doesn't give that much of A
• 22:52
  fuck, that's a different we're we're operating under the
• 22:55
  assumption that everybody cares. Right, but even to that end,
• 22:58
  like a player does not have to do homework, really.
• 23:01
  Even an Apocalypse World game. Whereas, well, I'm kind of
• 23:05
  saying, I'm kind of saying if they're, well, I'm kind of
• 23:09
  saying if they're invested enough, they do have to do
• 23:11
  homework. Like what I'm saying is if if
• 23:19
  you have a player who has that investment level, they do have
• 23:24
  to do a little bit of homework between sessions in that they
• 23:27
  have to think about and consider what's my player, what's my
• 23:33
  character going to do next? How are they going to react to
• 23:35
  this thing that just happened? We just learned about XY or Z
• 23:39
  threat. What's my response to it?
• 23:40
  Like, they do kind of have to do that homework a little bit
• 23:46
  because Apocalypse World is not a game that assumes the players
• 23:53
  or the player characters are just going to like, kick a door
• 23:56
  in and start dungeon fucking right.
• 23:58
  So there is a little bit of an emotional homework required from
• 24:02
  Apocalypse World. That being said, the GM, do they
• 24:06
  have to do a bit more relative to players because they have to
• 24:08
  cover more angles? Sure.
• 24:11
  And does the GM probably commit more of their homework to actual
• 24:16
  notes than players do? Yeah, probably.
• 24:19
  But it's pretty close. Like I think, I think it, it's a
• 24:25
  closer despair. It's a it's a closer.
• 24:33
  My brain wants to say disparity, and disparity is not the word.
• 24:36
  Closer workload than you might think, Maybe, but, but again.
• 24:44
  For the sake of this, it is still more than the players.
• 24:49
  Yeah, yeah, it is still a bit more.
• 24:51
  And I would say that for most games, I would say a game like
• 24:55
  an Apocalypse or Burning Wheel are much more the exception.
• 24:57
  So for a game like D&D, absolutely, you're doing more
• 25:02
  work and no question. Yeah.
• 25:06
  And like to Josh's point, right, the, the IT does lie, and I've
• 25:16
  said this twice already, it lies more in the IT depends territory
• 25:19
  because there are outliers. There are things that you take
• 25:21
  advantage that you should take a look into.
• 25:24
  And you know with, with games that most people are going to be
• 25:28
  playing, you know, the your DN, DS, your pathfinders, obviously
• 25:32
  different things nowadays, but those are still things that
• 25:34
  suffuse the industry. The onus is a lot higher on the
• 25:40
  GM. You're fabulous.
• 25:43
  Yeah, you're fabulous. Jonas is a lot higher on the GM.
• 25:47
  And to the other point, it is still work, you know?
• 25:51
  So yeah, while GM ING should be fun.
• 25:56
  On a, on a, on a, on a feelings, on a vibes kind of sense.
• 26:08
  I do think it's worth pointing out that if you're really vibing
• 26:14
  with the campaign and the game is doing well, GM ING can almost
• 26:18
  feel like not work or less work in a way.
• 26:25
  If you're really on that flow and everything is like, well,
• 26:32
  maybe I shouldn't say it's not work like it's work, but.
• 26:34
  So it what you'd say is it feels less like a chore as the as OP
• 26:38
  puts it. Yeah, yeah, If the campaign's
• 26:42
  going well and you're on the vibe, it doesn't.
• 26:43
  Like, let's put it this way. I woke up today at 5:00 in the
• 26:48
  morning to go to work, to run a stupid breakfast event or to to
• 26:55
  be a server for a breakfast, whatever.
• 26:57
  I woke up at 5:00 in the morning.
• 26:59
  I got home at like, I don't know, 11 or whatever and I was
• 27:04
  doing campaign prep for a good 2 1/2 hours probably.
• 27:10
  And it didn't feel like any particular work because the
• 27:14
  campaign is going relatively well.
• 27:16
  We just finished a little art, you know, we just finished like
• 27:19
  a, a sort of season 1 arc, if you will.
• 27:22
  Now there's new possibilities that of the directions things
• 27:26
  can go in. It didn't.
• 27:28
  Yeah, there there was not this like deeply heavy, heavy onus
• 27:35
  workload homework vibe that was going on.
• 27:38
  So when it's going well, you know, it's almost like the like
• 27:44
  the work exists but the work existing doesn't bother you, I
• 27:46
  guess. I think that goes from person to
• 27:49
  person because like, I'm not having the most fun with Lancer
• 27:52
  right now for like several reasons, mainly scheduling and
• 27:57
  like you know that that inevitable thing where if you
• 27:59
  don't play for a while, your motivation to run dies.
• 28:02
  Oh yeah. But even when I when I was
• 28:06
  having a great time at Lancer, it still felt like work.
• 28:08
  It didn't feel like a chore, but it was like, OK, I got to sit
• 28:11
  down, I got to prep the combat, I got to make sure that my
• 28:13
  things are balanced. All that stuff happens.
• 28:15
  Yeah. I mean, it's, it's work in the
• 28:17
  sense that you have to like sit down and actively do it, but I
• 28:21
  don't know. That's all I really mean.
• 28:22
  It's it's that you do have to sit down and do it, yeah.
• 28:26
  It is. It is work in the very literal
• 28:28
  definition of the work of the of the the definition of the word
• 28:32
  work, which is putting energy into a thing to get a result or
• 28:37
  whatever. What's the physic?
• 28:39
  Hold on, hold on. How was it defined in physics?
• 28:46
  It was like, no, that's not you know what I'm talking about.
• 28:56
  Yes, I can't think of it off the top of my head, but I know
• 28:58
  you're talking. About it's it's, I know it's
• 29:00
  killing me. It's like the energy transferred
• 29:04
  to or from an object by a force acting on it.
• 29:07
  Yeah. It's work in that very literal
• 29:12
  physics kind of sense. That's what I'm getting at.
• 29:15
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 29:16
  The transfer of energy I get. Yeah.
• 29:18
  That that's the one I was doing the transfer of energy.
• 29:22
  And to, you know, to this end, I do have to give OP like a little
• 29:26
  bit of slack, right? Because he's clearly not just
• 29:29
  played DND, right? He's talking about Daggerart.
• 29:31
  He's brought up other games. Why?
• 29:37
  I don't know. I, I, I don't know that.
• 29:39
  I would assume this person hasn't only played DND.
• 29:41
  This person may have looked at other games, but they may have
• 29:44
  only played DNDI don't know the the way they're wording it makes
• 29:47
  me question it a little bit. I don't know.
• 29:54
  Potentially I I don't know, I like I kind of had a similar
• 30:02
  thought, but yeah, I just the the bringing up Daggerheart and
• 30:05
  and they're. It's they're coming across as a
• 30:08
  person to this is, we're doing a lot of assuming here, but
• 30:12
  they're coming across as A, to me, as the kind of person who
• 30:16
  reads other games but is trapped only running DND because it's
• 30:21
  the only thing their group wants to play is DND, even though they
• 30:23
  want to play something. You know what I mean?
• 30:25
  That's how they're coming across to me a little bit.
• 30:29
  And I can't put my finger on why they're coming across that way,
• 30:34
  but that's yeah. OK, interesting.
• 30:38
  Yeah, that's not exactly how I read it, but I can see why you
• 30:41
  would say that. I could be totally off base.
• 30:47
  But I mean, like, this does lead into a different point, you
• 30:50
  know, like if if if we're talking purely about the, you
• 30:54
  know, the work versus reward and how much work is jamming really,
• 31:00
  it depends from game to game to as to what Josh said, right?
• 31:05
  If you are used to playing games that aren't D&D, or actually
• 31:11
  just sort of take from later notes, I sort of blame D&D for
• 31:19
  this thing being a problem in the 1st place because because it
• 31:31
  is the the Titan of the industry, and because it is so
• 31:34
  weighted against GMs in the in the the play dynamic.
• 31:39
  You get into this issue where, yeah, GM ING for D&D can be fun,
• 31:45
  can be fulfilling, can be a great time, but it's also a lot
• 31:52
  of fucking work. When you think about the problem
• 31:57
  with the current paradigm is that the leading Titan game, the
• 32:00
  leading game of the entire industry, does not help out GMs
• 32:06
  very much. And because it is the leading
• 32:09
  game, most people assume that jamming is an exponentially
• 32:14
  higher workload. Because the lead game leaves you
• 32:18
  hanging in a lot of regards. And so it perpetuates that
• 32:23
  mentality of, oh, other games must be like this, when in
• 32:27
  actuality, a lot, a lot of other games give you much more helpful
• 32:36
  tools and much better assistance about handling the GM side of
• 32:42
  the game. Not all of them, some of them
• 32:44
  fucking suck at it, but a lot of them do way better than D&D
• 32:47
  does. And I think another thing that
• 32:52
  has perpetuated the problem, particularly when we're talking
• 32:55
  about the current era of tabletop games, when we're
• 32:58
  referring to 5th edition, the 24 TMDMG was fucking bad.
• 33:05
  It was for 10 years, not useless, but not close.
• 33:13
  Pretty close, pretty close to useless.
• 33:16
  And so because the 2014 GM was fucking ass cheeks, and this is
• 33:20
  not even me being, this is not even me bullying D&D, the guys
• 33:25
  who wrote the DMG said it was bad.
• 33:28
  All right, Chris Perkins is on record saying the 2014 GMDMG was
• 33:33
  not good. All right, so it's not just me.
• 33:37
  People who designed that book didn't like that book.
• 33:39
  So that, combined with the fact that 5E as a system in general
• 33:45
  doesn't do a great job of helping out the DM, has further
• 33:50
  perpetuated the problem. And because 5E is the the front
• 33:56
  man, everyone assumes that a problem applies across the board
• 34:00
  when it doesn't necessarily. Yeah.
• 34:05
  And there are other games that are worse than 5 E though.
• 34:07
  Shadowrun, I'm looking at you. Shadowrun.
• 34:09
  I'm going to say it, Lancer. No.
• 34:17
  Oh, that's rough, but. Well, it's here's the thing,
• 34:21
  it's worse. I think the so it's how do I
• 34:25
  want to wear this? The tools that Lancer gives you
• 34:29
  blows DND 2014 out of the fucking water and it's not
• 34:33
  close. However, the sheer amount
• 34:36
  amount, the sheer amount of sheet you're going to have to
• 34:38
  build that might the sheer amount of shit that you need to
• 34:42
  prep is so much higher the the stat blocks more complicated
• 34:49
  that the Lancer has to be prepped.
• 34:52
  Like a game of math like that sounds really stupid but it's
• 34:58
  true. Because I have to go, OK, the
• 35:01
  players can do roughly this much damage.
• 35:03
  And yes, you do this in D&D, but it's worse Lancer, believe me,
• 35:07
  you go, they have to do this much math, OK, Well, considering
• 35:10
  that the players always will always get 3 to 4 attacks
• 35:14
  depending on what they're doing, and then you have to take into
• 35:16
  account, OK, are they going to be doing actual damage?
• 35:17
  Are they going to be doing reactor damage with heat?
• 35:19
  OK, I have a hacker. OK, so the hacker's going to be
• 35:21
  doing this. This will not count towards this
• 35:23
  kind of health bar. It will have to count towards
• 35:25
  this kind of health bar. And I'll have to keep track of
• 35:26
  structure versus reactor damage. And you have to shift those for
• 35:30
  different NPCS. And the fact that every NPC has
• 35:35
  basically unlimited customization does make things a
• 35:41
  little difficult when you go, OK, I have to sort of tailor
• 35:44
  these bad guys to not get absolutely pub stomped by the
• 35:48
  players. Give them higher reactor, give
• 35:50
  them this, give them that, but don't give them so much.
• 35:53
  Don't flood the action economy too much to where it just
• 35:55
  becomes this painful slug, because I've done this three
• 35:58
  Times Now where I went, OK, well, I really don't want to
• 36:01
  flood them with super strong bad guys, so I'll give them a lot of
• 36:03
  weak characters. And that fight is still too
• 36:06
  easy. It just takes longer when
• 36:10
  typically the minion things are supposed to speed things up.
• 36:14
  And Lancer it doesn't nodded even a little bit.
• 36:18
  Yeah, You know, I really don't want to hit you with the I
• 36:23
  called that shit. But I remember when we were
• 36:27
  looking at when we were looking at Lancer and I had the thought
• 36:35
  I was like, man, this game seems like it's going to be really
• 36:38
  tough to run. And you were like, yeah, it
• 36:41
  doesn't seem that bad. And I was like, I don't know,
• 36:43
  boss, I'm seeing a lot of math. That's going to be a hard time.
• 36:47
  And yeah. And you know, you weren't like
• 36:52
  you weren't wrong, but you also weren't 100% correct.
• 36:55
  I'm also AGM who goes, OK, well, the players blitzed past this,
• 36:59
  this fight, even if it's like a boss, I, I'm still in the camp
• 37:04
  of I don't care as long as they were like they had fun because
• 37:08
  my fun is still directly linked to them having fun.
• 37:11
  If they like what I'm doing, I like what they're doing.
• 37:14
  So I mean, I'm not necessarily saying it's like, yeah, you can,
• 37:21
  you could do that. I'm just, I'm just saying I saw
• 37:26
  I I could see the difficulty of prep on the wall for that game.
• 37:31
  Like I could just tell from how it was constructed.
• 37:34
  I was like, this is going to be like, I could just tell that the
• 37:44
  math was going to be a lot like I could see, right, right.
• 37:48
  All I'm saying. Is that wanted you to balance
• 37:50
  and everything? Right it all I'm saying is that
• 37:53
  I'm I'm likely having an easier time because I'm just OK with
• 37:57
  the math not working as long as I don't TPK my players as long
• 38:01
  as I can get close to a desired effect like.
• 38:04
  But it's still taking up a lot of brain juice no matter what.
• 38:06
  It is, yeah. It is absolutely taking up a lot
• 38:08
  of brain juice. And I do know, like if I can GM
• 38:12
  fucking Lancer and have that work, I know I can do D&D.
• 38:15
  But yeah, yeah. I mean, I think Lancer being a
• 38:20
  MEC game, just trying to it helps.
• 38:22
  Just on the lowest level of mechs.
• 38:24
  Cool. Therefore, I want to do it a
• 38:25
  little more. I mean yes, like.
• 38:28
  A theme and vibe of game is a deeply important seller to
• 38:34
  whether you're going to play the game right.
• 38:40
  Listen, everybody take a shot. It's fighting game talk time.
• 38:45
  There's a fighting game out there called Them's Fighting
• 38:48
  Herds, which is essentially, it was originally a My Little Pony
• 38:53
  fighting game that got redesigned to be just like
• 38:58
  cutesy animal fighting game. And it's a sick fighting game.
• 39:01
  It has really cool mechanics, but I am right off of the RIP
• 39:06
  less invested in playing them's Fighting Herds because of the
• 39:10
  vibe in the aesthetic. Like just off RIP right?
• 39:14
  So even though I know I've played it, I know it's a really
• 39:18
  dope game mechanically. I know it plays a lot like
• 39:21
  schoolgirls, and I fucking love schoolgirls, but the vibe of
• 39:25
  playing funny ice reindeer is just not as cool when I can play
• 39:32
  a game where I could be funny President Ninja Man instead, you
• 39:36
  know what I'm saying? Yeah.
• 39:40
  So it's, you know, like, yeah, vibe is a thing.
• 39:44
  So yeah, you being like Mex cool.
• 39:46
  So want to learn more, invest in learning this game.
• 39:49
  Yeah, makes sense. It's a it's a valid thing.
• 39:54
  I also think D&D is slightly responsible for that problem
• 39:57
  too, because a lot of people don't understand how many
• 40:01
  different. Genres of RPG there are out
• 40:05
  there and everybody assumes that everything is, you know, heroic
• 40:08
  dungeon. Fucking fantasy game.
• 40:11
  What you're saying is everyone thinks that video games are
• 40:13
  Minecraft or Fortnite? Yes, yes, or Skyrim.
• 40:16
  That's the one you used. Yeah, well, that's the one Matt
• 40:19
  used to use, yes. Basically, yeah.
• 40:22
  Everyone thinks every people look at tabletop and assume it's
• 40:25
  all DND in the same way that your grandma looks at video
• 40:28
  games and assume it's assumes it's all Fortnite.
• 40:32
  Yeah, yeah, God damn it all. Right look.
• 40:39
  It's true. If there was ever an if there
• 40:40
  was ever an argument that would have had me jump to your side,
• 40:43
  it was it was the research I did for this topic because I had to
• 40:49
  think about it a certain kind of way.
• 40:50
  And I was like, oh shit, wait. But I do want to point out a
• 40:57
  little small thing because Isaiah is talking about how
• 41:00
  Lancer is a, you know, somewhat stressful game to prep for
• 41:05
  because tight math. Just because a game has tight
• 41:10
  math, though, does not inherently turn it into a
• 41:15
  stressful situation. Sometimes it's just about how
• 41:19
  the game delivers the math to you, because Fabulous Ultima is
• 41:25
  also a game about pretty tight math, but it's not it It
• 41:32
  delivers the information to you in a way that you can parse it
• 41:36
  pretty quickly. And most of the math is not so
• 41:43
  deeply complicated that you can't like reverse engineer and
• 41:46
  parse it. So sometimes the way the
• 41:49
  information is delivered is really relevant too, Like having
• 41:53
  really complicated information but delivering it in such a
• 41:55
  fashion that it is easily digestible is different than
• 41:59
  having complicated information and also making it hard to like
• 42:03
  just literally just digest on a basic level.
• 42:07
  That is, I I will give Lancer the fact that the way it
• 42:12
  delivers the information to you is pretty clear and concise.
• 42:14
  Like I don't look at a stat block and and I'm not, you know,
• 42:16
  I can look at it and not feel confused.
• 42:20
  I wasn't, I wouldn't say I was confused by step blocks in
• 42:23
  Lancer or anything like that. But I will say I remember
• 42:25
  reading Lancer and feeling like the math was obfuscated a
• 42:32
  little, a little far away from my taste.
• 42:35
  Like there was, there was, I was looking at the math and I was
• 42:41
  like, I don't know if this math makes sense as to why you went
• 42:45
  with this particular set of dice or this number.
• 42:48
  Like if I can't, if I can't understand why you chose 5
• 42:53
  damage for this ability versus 10 damage, if it's not clear why
• 42:57
  you went in One Direction versus the other, that makes it
• 43:00
  inherently a lot harder for me to do my own thing.
• 43:03
  Because if I can't understand the math, I'm hesitant to try
• 43:06
  and make my own stat blocks or make my own characters or
• 43:10
  whatever, because then I'm doing custom math.
• 43:14
  And if I don't understand the the baseline of the math, it's a
• 43:16
  lot harder to do the custom math.
• 43:18
  You know what I'm saying? Yeah.
• 43:20
  Granted, I didn't look at Lancer that closely, so perhaps if I
• 43:24
  looked at it more I would start to parse it better.
• 43:28
  Yeah, I mean, the the very basic idea of Lancer's math, I'm not
• 43:31
  going to get into it really hard, but weapons that are meant
• 43:35
  to be stable, like consistent things like machine guns, right,
• 43:39
  Machine guns will do kind of the same damage no matter what.
• 43:43
  Those are pretty often arbitrated as flat numbers,
• 43:46
  whereas weapons that should be a bit more swingy, things like
• 43:49
  sniper rifles, you know, being able to hit certain parts of the
• 43:52
  body, or like rocket launchers, those typically have dice pools.
• 43:57
  So like I should say, it has three flat damage as opposed to
• 44:01
  1D3 damage. Oh that's interesting.
• 44:05
  I should also point out I fucking suck at math so you got
• 44:11
  to make your math real fucking stupid for me to be able to
• 44:13
  easily get it. Just just throwing that one out
• 44:17
  there that is relevant. That's why when I try to reverse
• 44:21
  engineer the math in 5 E my brain does a herdie and I give
• 44:26
  up sometimes. Like anytime I was doing I
• 44:30
  avoided doing my own stat blocks as much as possible in 5 E and
• 44:34
  the few times that I would adjust stat blocks, the bonuses
• 44:37
  and shit. We was winging it, baby.
• 44:39
  We was taking a good guess. That was so funny when Matt
• 44:44
  would be like, oh, so I really worked out the CR for this fight
• 44:48
  and it isn't what I thought it would be.
• 44:49
  And I would just constantly go, oh, you care about CRLOL Lamau
• 44:53
  Never once looked at it. We're just giving CR numbers,
• 44:58
  baby. I'm, I'm giving it numbers for
• 45:00
  Prof bonuses. That's all I care about.
• 45:02
  I mean to be fair I wasn't even talking about CRI, was referring
• 45:05
  to like to hip bonuses and shit like that.
• 45:07
  Oh. Yes, also just vibes.
• 45:10
  That's what I mean, yeah, Because the math of 5 E is not
• 45:14
  clear. It's obfuscated in a way that
• 45:16
  makes it difficult to parse, and then you just kind of have to
• 45:19
  say fuck it. That is actually OK.
• 45:22
  That is something I do really like about Lancer is that you
• 45:25
  have very clear that they give, they give your numbers very
• 45:32
  evocative. What's the word?
• 45:34
  I'm looking for templates. So you know, if if you want a an
• 45:42
  enemy pilot to have a + 5 to an attack roll, right?
• 45:45
  Like that, we're just throwing arbitrary numbers out there.
• 45:48
  You give them the elite template to say, well, well, they're
• 45:51
  better than most people. They are going to have a better
• 45:54
  Prof mod, you know what I mean? Fabula does that too actually.
• 45:58
  Yeah, I, I, I think the template system or or the archetype
• 46:02
  system, whatever you want to call it it, it's got a different
• 46:04
  name in, in a million different systems.
• 46:07
  I think that works really well and DND tries to do it by being
• 46:11
  like, you know, goblin versus goblin champion, but it don't
• 46:14
  work because champion is not a title.
• 46:17
  There's not human champion, there's not dragon champion, it
• 46:20
  there's. Just, and also again, DND
• 46:24
  obfuscates its math, so it is incredibly difficult to try and
• 46:30
  understand from a pure number standpoint what makes the goblin
• 46:34
  champion versus what makes the regular goblin.
• 46:39
  You know, yeah, you also get some weird shit though, right
• 46:42
  Where it's like. Oh yeah, when they ignore their
• 46:44
  own math. Well they ignore their own math.
• 46:46
  Or when like a character is supposed to be cooler but is
• 46:50
  like way cooler right? You get like pirate versus
• 46:52
  pirate captain. You're like these are not the
• 46:53
  same stat block at all. Like pirate is random goober
• 46:58
  with like 1 short sort attack and then a pirate captain gets
• 47:02
  like 3 attacks and like 2 bonus actions and all this crazy shit.
• 47:07
  Like 1 doesn't feel like a natural progression to the other
• 47:09
  one is like goober versus boss. Yeah, yeah.
• 47:17
  They've fixed that in 2024, but like, or they've kind of fixed
• 47:21
  it in 2024, but like. Kind of kind of big kind of.
• 47:25
  They've added more stat blocks that have given you more tools
• 47:27
  to like upgrade stat blocks, but yeah, it's still not super
• 47:31
  clear. Anyway, we are once again wildly
• 47:34
  off topic. When I first sorted out spoke
• 47:38
  about my thesis, I very specifically mentioned that I
• 47:40
  think there are a lot of fallacies involved with the
• 47:42
  forever GM situation. And I feel like it's worth
• 47:45
  bringing those up because that is a bold, it's like accusation,
• 47:48
  but one that I think is completely warranted and I
• 47:50
  think. I should be before you continue.
• 47:53
  There's another fallacy that I feel like we need to address.
• 47:55
  Oh. The fallacy of that nobody
• 47:59
  listening has currently hit the subscribe button.
• 48:01
  Oh my God, ladies and gentlemen, he did it.
• 48:04
  I got it, gave us 40 minutes in. We got there 40 minutes, 4048
• 48:10
  minutes in. Oh, my goodness.
• 48:12
  Oh my goodness. Oh my.
• 48:14
  Damn. It's going ham.
• 48:15
  Did you? Yeah.
• 48:17
  I mean, I think the the like, yes, that is a bold accident to
• 48:20
  say like, oh, if people are just like giving into fallacy and
• 48:23
  that's why this problem exists. But it's kind of true.
• 48:28
  And like, look no farther than the first comment on this post,
• 48:32
  which is I think most forever GMs are forever GMs because they
• 48:36
  prefer GM ING. I don't think that's true, not
• 48:42
  across the board. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,
• 48:45
  wait. So that that person is saying I
• 48:50
  don't think forever GMs actually exist.
• 48:51
  I think you just have people who wanted GM more than others and I
• 48:56
  don't think that's true. I think that's that's the poster
• 49:00
  saying I like GM ING more than I like playing.
• 49:03
  Oh, he likes jamming more than he likes playing, so everyone
• 49:07
  must like that. That's that's how the comment
• 49:09
  reads. That.
• 49:12
  And I don't think. That's true.
• 49:13
  I think that is probably a case of survivor bias.
• 49:19
  Well, it's confirmation bias. It's right for me, therefore
• 49:21
  it's right for everybody. Kind of, well, what the reason I
• 49:27
  say I think it's my beast falling in the realm of survivor
• 49:30
  bias is because. If oh, you're thinking it's the
• 49:38
  I, I, I figured it out so everyone can figure it out.
• 49:43
  Kinda it's like the people who who who pause, pause the
• 49:54
  thought, pause the thought, the people who accept the GM chair
• 49:59
  and and finally decide, OK, I'm going to run.
• 50:04
  The percentage of those people who are more likely to also find
• 50:12
  running the game fun and are the ones who are willing to jump
• 50:17
  into the seat is a lot higher, right.
• 50:22
  If you take 10 people in a room and six of them want to GM think
• 50:31
  GM ING is fun, but eight of them get in the GM seat, the six are
• 50:37
  going to overcrowd the other two because the the quote UN quote
• 50:41
  survivorship bias is like is basically, well, we sat in the
• 50:46
  GM chair and we thought it was really fun.
• 50:48
  So everyone else is going to think it's really fun, right?
• 50:52
  And you're kind of ignoring the two other people that didn't
• 50:56
  like it because they're the ones who died, quote UN quote.
• 50:59
  You know what I mean? In the, in their survivorship
• 51:01
  bias situation, they're the ones who quietly died.
• 51:06
  And so you ignore them because the ones who liked it are the
• 51:10
  ones you're paying attention to, because the ones who liked it
• 51:13
  are the ones who made it home, quote UN quote.
• 51:15
  I'm thinking of that chart with the plane that has all the
• 51:18
  bullet holes in it and the the planes that made it home,
• 51:21
  they're like, oh, we should reinforce that part of the
• 51:23
  armor. And it's like, no, no, you
• 51:24
  should reinforce the other parts of the art, right?
• 51:26
  That whole thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 51:27
  It's like we're listening to the six GMs who said they really,
• 51:30
  really thought it was fun because they kind of crowded out
• 51:34
  the other two GMs who didn't think it was fun.
• 51:38
  It's like it's, yeah, I guess it's like a combination of
• 51:41
  confirmation and survivorship bias in a weird way.
• 51:43
  It's like smooshed together. Yeah, and.
• 51:46
  So I understand why the person is saying that.
• 51:48
  Like I get what they're coming from.
• 51:49
  Where where they're coming from. And to that point, that's not to
• 51:53
  say that those people don't exist.
• 51:56
  Josh himself has said multiple times that he prefers jamming.
• 51:59
  Overplaying Cardell is the exact same way.
• 52:02
  So these people exist, but I struggle to believe that that's
• 52:05
  the vast majority of people who are playing rather to what Josh
• 52:10
  said as well. I think more often than not, the
• 52:12
  GM position is failed through necessity and like general
• 52:17
  willingness to expand your horizons rather than to fulfill
• 52:20
  and maintain one specific role at the table.
• 52:22
  You know what I mean? Someone goes, oh, well, I like,
• 52:24
  I really want to play D&D, but we don't have a person to run
• 52:27
  the game. Fuck it, I'll just figure it
• 52:28
  out. I'll do it.
• 52:30
  As opposed to someone being like, we're playing D&D and I'm
• 52:32
  going to run this bitch, right? I mean, more often than not I
• 52:36
  fight it to be the latter. I get what you mean for sure.
• 52:41
  I do wonder though, yeah. Is it, is it a case that more
• 52:51
  like if everyone was being 100% honest, Right.
• 52:54
  Let's just assume you you surveyed people and everyone was
• 53:02
  being 100% honest. Would the survey results bring
• 53:07
  back that a much higher percentage want to would prefer
• 53:11
  to be players or a much higher percentage would prefer to be
• 53:14
  GMs? I don't know.
• 53:18
  I mean, I think the, the I think you have to expand your scope
• 53:21
  even farther. You give, you'd have to give
• 53:25
  everyone the ideal game for them, right, Right, right.
• 53:29
  Well, you've seen as we've seen the DND with DMV it it is a
• 53:33
  pretty skewed, skewed, yes, very skewed ratio of more people want
• 53:39
  to play than people want to run. Assume.
• 53:45
  Yeah, you'd have to assume a couple things.
• 53:48
  Assume it's the game that they. It's the perfect game for them,
• 53:52
  right? Assume it's everybody's.
• 53:54
  It's their apocalypse world for them and assume that they're
• 54:01
  going to run that game with like a basically assuming an
• 54:08
  excellent scenario, right? A good Group, A game they like,
• 54:12
  an idea, a strong inspiration they have, right?
• 54:15
  Taking all of the like perfect dynamic scenarios into account.
• 54:20
  And then it's kind of funny I say taking taking the perfect
• 54:25
  dynamic into account as if the perfect dynamic is like really
• 54:28
  hard to achieve. It's not actually that hard to
• 54:30
  achieve, but that's not the point.
• 54:35
  I think people think it's harder to achieve than it actually is.
• 54:37
  You just have to find some friends you like playing with
• 54:39
  and then find a game you like running and like kind of the
• 54:41
  magic happens. But I mean Moon is perfect
• 54:43
  example of this. Yeah, well, I I I wasn't even I
• 54:48
  was just thinking about just the campaign I'm running right now.
• 54:52
  Like the dynamic is basically flawless, you know, and I didn't
• 54:57
  do anything special. I just players.
• 54:59
  I know that'll probably work good together game.
• 55:02
  I want to run boomer bang, smash it together.
• 55:04
  But you know, like, but yeah, assuming an excellent group
• 55:09
  scenario, assuming all that good shit, would more people want to
• 55:13
  GM or more people want to play? I again, also assume everyone's
• 55:19
  being totally honest because, you know, that's always a
• 55:22
  factor. I I I feel like it would be a
• 55:28
  pretty 5050 split honestly. I think it would be, I think
• 55:34
  closer, but I don't think it'd be.
• 55:35
  I think I still think you're looking at like 535 because you
• 55:42
  have to the the thing that you still have to already take maybe
• 55:45
  is workload. Like a lot of people play DND as
• 55:51
  like a stress reliever. Like I don't have to work.
• 55:54
  I don't have to think I can just do funny voice and play game.
• 56:00
  I I. Know what you mean?
• 56:01
  I do. I do.
• 56:02
  I I think, yeah. But the perfect analysis is you
• 56:06
  have to look at like casual versus rank to come.
• 56:09
  Up right, Right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 56:10
  No, I do get I, I, I get what you're getting at, but I have to
• 56:16
  wonder because the thing about GM ING is if you're into it, it
• 56:23
  gives you quite a like gives you a bit of a power trip, you know,
• 56:28
  like it gives you this like I am the authoritative 1 and that can
• 56:34
  kind of override the workload sometimes if you really, if
• 56:38
  that, if it really hits right, you know what I mean?
• 56:40
  So like, like I, I get, I don't know.
• 56:44
  Yeah, I don't, I don't know. That's such a tough, that's such
• 56:47
  a tough call. And there's no way to get an
• 56:49
  answer to is the unfortunate thing.
• 56:50
  But right, yeah, I think it would skew a lot.
• 56:54
  Let's put it this way, assuming excellent scenario for everyone
• 56:59
  at the at the proverbial table, I think it would skew a lot
• 57:02
  closer towards the middle than most people would assume.
• 57:08
  Right, 'cause I think if you talk.
• 57:10
  To your I'll give you talk to your.
• 57:13
  You talk to your average 5 E player, they're going to say
• 57:16
  it's like 8515, right? Like most 85% of people want to
• 57:20
  be players. But again, assuming that good
• 57:24
  scenario, game you want to run, good group, you know all that
• 57:27
  shit, I feel like you'd push a lot more towards the middle.
• 57:32
  Like I said, I will give you that 100% I I still think it
• 57:35
  would be like a 6535, but. Yeah, I could kind of see a like
• 57:41
  a 6040 split. Yeah, I could see it.
• 57:47
  I almost want to say it, and this is this is, you know, maybe
• 57:50
  a little elitist, but like I think people who are more
• 57:56
  willing to run, I would refer to as like PTRPG hobbyists.
• 58:02
  Is it something that they're doing?
• 58:02
  They want to improve, they want to expand their horizons on
• 58:06
  versus casual players, right? You can play video games as a
• 58:09
  hobby, right? You play rank you, you try to
• 58:13
  improve. You're actively looking for
• 58:15
  things that you want to do. You're modding games, but you
• 58:17
  could also just be a casual player, somebody, right?
• 58:21
  You could be a you just want to load up game and play game.
• 58:23
  You just, yeah, you load up Candy Crush or fucking COD or
• 58:26
  whatever and Dick around with it versus fucking dorks like us who
• 58:30
  have thousands of hours in games and like, commit to improving at
• 58:34
  this game for no particular reason other because you other
• 58:37
  than because you want to, yeah. Right, and I have to make this
• 58:40
  caveat. There's a distinction there for
• 58:42
  sure. I have to make this caveat
• 58:44
  because I know someone is going to yell at us, either one of our
• 58:47
  friends or a commenter. Yes, if you are someone who is a
• 58:51
  power builder in D and DI would also call you a hobbyist.
• 58:56
  However, you should, I think, be taking some of that energy and
• 59:00
  putting it into learning how to run the game, because all you're
• 59:03
  doing when you do that is the shit that you're doing as a
• 59:06
  player. You just have a little bit more
• 59:07
  to do, but it gives you more things to do.
• 59:10
  Like no. Honestly, I think basically any
• 59:12
  if I think anyone who's interested in the the
• 59:18
  powerbuilder type vibe of whether it be 5 E or Pathfinder
• 59:22
  or whatever, basically any player, if you're a player who
• 59:26
  does that kind of thing, yes, you should try in GM because you
• 59:30
  have that inclination in you already.
• 59:33
  It is there. You have the chutzpah.
• 59:35
  It's in your soul in some fashion.
• 59:37
  You're already you're basically doing the GM thing anyway.
• 59:41
  You're just doing it on the other side of the table.
• 59:43
  So like, yeah, if you're trying to min Max, how much damage you
• 59:47
  could do around with different class magic, if you're looking
• 59:51
  through the if you're looking through every fucking class and
• 59:55
  subclass in the game, you know, assuming 5 E and then you're
• 59:59
  looking through every magic item in the game and you're cross
• 1:00:02
  referencing multi classing this many levels of fighter with this
• 1:00:07
  many levels of sorcerer plus this many levels of paladin plus
• 1:00:10
  this magic item, you're doing GM work.
• 1:00:13
  That's what GM work is, right? You are one.
• 1:00:15
  Million percent doing GM work. I'm looking.
• 1:00:17
  At this monster and I'm craft craft referencing, you know this
• 1:00:21
  area of the setting and then I'm looking at this list of names
• 1:00:25
  and these gods and how do they fit together OK that makes an
• 1:00:28
  adventure. You're just doing GM work, so
• 1:00:30
  like, just fucking GM the game. Yeah A. 100% agree.
• 1:00:34
  I hate that power builder shit and you may have just identified
• 1:00:37
  the reason I don't like it. It's because it's wasted energy.
• 1:00:40
  I Oh yeah, OK, I wouldn't go that far, but.
• 1:00:42
  What I mean is like, it's energy that could be put towards GM.
• 1:00:46
  Like the energy that people put towards the Powerbuilder thing I
• 1:00:51
  think would be better used if you tried to put it towards
• 1:00:53
  running your own game, you know what I mean?
• 1:00:55
  Yeah, that I that I'm more even. If it's just a couple of
• 1:00:58
  sessions I could see it. Yeah.
• 1:01:06
  But you know, I have a weird vendetta against that kind of
• 1:01:11
  person. I definitely don't, but yeah.
• 1:01:15
  I mean, maybe vendetta is a maybe vendetta is a strong word,
• 1:01:18
  but like, I don't know, I just get frustrated because I always
• 1:01:21
  feel like you're it's like, God, you're just directing your
• 1:01:24
  energy in like a like a bad direction.
• 1:01:28
  I don't know. Anyway, we're tired.
• 1:01:35
  Power builders are their own topics, so we don't need to.
• 1:01:37
  Yeah, yeah. Keep going down that rabbit
• 1:01:39
  hole. Kind of looping back to an
• 1:01:43
  earlier point about like DD and D Well, sorry, no, not not D&D,
• 1:01:48
  sorry. Where was I?
• 1:01:49
  On my nose? I don't know, I got lost too.
• 1:01:57
  Oh, right. Well, yeah, we talked about
• 1:01:59
  workload, but like it's worth. Yeah.
• 1:02:00
  Well, no. So considering that we did talk
• 1:02:04
  about it more than I expected to, Yeah, we're going to skip
• 1:02:05
  past that. OK.
• 1:02:08
  To the well, to the to the to the back, to the point of
• 1:02:12
  levying blame. I do have to agree with OPA
• 1:02:17
  little bit in that DMS themselves are not free to
• 1:02:20
  blame, myself included. If you're AGM who wants to find
• 1:02:26
  a game to play, it actually is not that hard to find it if you
• 1:02:32
  take the steps to do it. But it is worth mentioning that
• 1:02:36
  GMs don't take those steps and will continue to be upset.
• 1:02:41
  You know what I mean? If you want to find a game to
• 1:02:44
  play as AGM and your friends aren't doing it, you can go on
• 1:02:50
  forums, you can go on rule 20s game Finder, you can think about
• 1:02:53
  swapping more receptive players. Than it roll Tony discord
• 1:02:59
  fucking looking for Group 4 like there's so many options.
• 1:03:05
  There's a lot of options. Yeah, it's a lot of options it.
• 1:03:08
  And again, I'm guilty of this where my players don't like
• 1:03:12
  running and I want to play as a player in my party and there are
• 1:03:17
  steps I could take to make that goal of reality, but I don't.
• 1:03:24
  Well, I, I, I do think it is worth pointing out too with
• 1:03:27
  this, with this particular element of the conundrum, I
• 1:03:33
  guess people, a lot of people are hesitant to try and find
• 1:03:47
  people don't want to try and find randos to play with because
• 1:03:51
  they're worried about, you know, meeting random people and them
• 1:03:56
  being fucking weird or whatever valid or, or them being unable
• 1:04:01
  to interact with those people because of XYZ.
• 1:04:04
  You know, whatever it is. The thing you have to take into
• 1:04:08
  account though, is trying to going online to a looking for
• 1:04:13
  group subreddit or a discord or something like that is a little
• 1:04:20
  different than just meeting some random people at a bar or
• 1:04:24
  meeting some random people at like a, a work event.
• 1:04:28
  The difference is you're all looking for fellow tabletop
• 1:04:33
  players, so you're all looking for a shared interest.
• 1:04:40
  It's a lot easier to get your foot in the door when you know
• 1:04:43
  that everybody is interested in the same thing, right?
• 1:04:47
  You're not walking up to a random group of people and
• 1:04:49
  saying, hey, do you guys know what D&D is?
• 1:04:51
  You're walking into a room where everybody already knows what D&D
• 1:04:55
  is and saying, who wants to play D&D, right?
• 1:04:57
  That's very different. Mm hmm.
• 1:04:59
  So you really got to take that, that part of it into account
• 1:05:04
  because the shared interest often will lead to much easier
• 1:05:14
  interaction right off the bat because you already have
• 1:05:18
  something to talk about. Let's say you match.
• 1:05:22
  Let's say you're a scrawny white boy nerd from like New Jersey.
• 1:05:28
  Who's, you know, like, never. Why did I say it like that?
• 1:05:33
  Because New Jersey. What do you mean?
• 1:05:35
  Who's New Jersey who's never left home?
• 1:05:39
  And you go online on a forum looking for fellow D&D players
• 1:05:44
  and you, you, you match up with the group.
• 1:05:46
  You get a group going, and one of the guys you group up with is
• 1:05:50
  a Southern biker from Tejas from Texas, who wears Leathers and is
• 1:05:57
  tattooed from head to toe. You would never speak to that
• 1:06:00
  man on the street, but you both happen to be D&D nerds, and all
• 1:06:05
  of a sudden you're talking to this person.
• 1:06:06
  It's an easy it. It breaks the barrier down
• 1:06:09
  because you know, at the very least, if you can't talk to him
• 1:06:13
  about anything else, you can talk to him about D&D and that
• 1:06:18
  makes it that much easier. It's true.
• 1:06:21
  And you might, you don't know, you might find out he also
• 1:06:23
  really likes gardening and you really like gardening.
• 1:06:25
  And then you're talking about gardening and then you move to
• 1:06:27
  Texas and now you're married. But that's beside the point.
• 1:06:30
  That's a little, you know, that's, that's further down the
• 1:06:32
  road, but it's, it can happen. What an odd circumstance you've
• 1:06:36
  built. It is a weird scenario I've
• 1:06:39
  built up in my head, but it happens.
• 1:06:42
  Weirder shit is that, listen, I've seen so many stories of
• 1:06:45
  people being like, I met my girlfriend on Wow and now we're
• 1:06:47
  married, you know, like it happens.
• 1:06:51
  That is, I've not met one of those, but that is impressive.
• 1:06:54
  I've talked to people who've done that.
• 1:06:57
  We have people in our free company on 14 that have done
• 1:07:00
  that. I'm like, is it Sig?
• 1:07:05
  Sig? Yeah, OK.
• 1:07:06
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I was thinking Ben JoJo,
• 1:07:10
  also Ben. Well, he.
• 1:07:12
  One Ben, too. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:07:13
  Also Ben. Yeah.
• 1:07:18
  And yeah, I mean to to this point, this whole hullabaloo,
• 1:07:22
  this is basic sunk cost. I put the so much time into you.
• 1:07:25
  I don't want to start from scratch.
• 1:07:27
  But like you don't have to start from scratch.
• 1:07:31
  I think, and this might be a controversial take, parties
• 1:07:37
  should be, I don't want to say pruned, but they should be
• 1:07:44
  cycled every so often. And that doesn't mean like you
• 1:07:47
  kick your friends out, you don't have to play with them again.
• 1:07:48
  But like perfect example is our DND group, technically speaking,
• 1:07:53
  is fucking enormous. Like when you think about the
• 1:07:57
  people who have played with, played together, who will play
• 1:07:59
  together, who've talked about running games for each other,
• 1:08:03
  There's probably about 20 of us. You mean, oh, us specifically?
• 1:08:06
  Yeah. I mean, yeah, we got a lot of.
• 1:08:07
  People. Everyone in the Dungeons and
• 1:08:08
  Dragons server, everyone in my server, hell even people in in
• 1:08:13
  Luna's server and Cardell's server.
• 1:08:16
  Like you take into account all those people and you're even
• 1:08:19
  talking about like, you know, the outliers.
• 1:08:21
  Like Moogie, like her boyfriend, who I still don't have a screen
• 1:08:27
  name for because I can't ever remember what his actual screen
• 1:08:29
  name is. But I know it's not conducive to
• 1:08:31
  actually being a good screen name.
• 1:08:33
  Fungi beatbox or wherever the. Fuck is yeah, no, I'm not using
• 1:08:38
  that one. Yeah, yeah, I know what you're
• 1:08:40
  talking about. When you think about all those
• 1:08:42
  people, that creates a very large party.
• 1:08:45
  Clearly you can't have all the people playing at once.
• 1:08:47
  So it does make more sense to go, OK, I want you, you, you,
• 1:08:50
  you, you and my. That party is technically big
• 1:08:53
  enough for me to do that too. There are players that I go,
• 1:08:55
  well, I really want them to play.
• 1:08:56
  Not that I don't want other players to play, you know, like
• 1:09:00
  it's not that I don't want it kicked or I don't want to kick
• 1:09:03
  anyone out of my current party, but there are other players I
• 1:09:05
  want to play with and a party can only hit a certain size
• 1:09:07
  before I lose my fucking mind. So some of my current players
• 1:09:10
  might have to go so I can try running for new focus.
• 1:09:15
  And that sucks. But you also need to have the,
• 1:09:18
  you know, adult conversation to be like, hey, look, man, and
• 1:09:20
  nothing against you, not against anybody who's I'm not playing
• 1:09:23
  with. We'll play a game together soon.
• 1:09:25
  Just. Like we have to wait.
• 1:09:28
  For a little bit. Honestly, we have a weird kind
• 1:09:31
  of unique reverse problem of this situation.
• 1:09:34
  Where we are spoiled for choice on players.
• 1:09:36
  Yeah, we have too many players and we have to tell people to to
• 1:09:39
  like, hit the road. Yeah, it is unfortunate like.
• 1:09:47
  Yeah, of course, because you want it like everyone who's
• 1:09:49
  interested, you want to be able to like have in the game, but
• 1:09:53
  that's just not reasonable. Yeah, I mean, I've said it
• 1:09:56
  before, I think after Lancer I'm going to just start doing like 6
• 1:09:59
  month campaigns and just, you know, U3U four, you're with me.
• 1:10:05
  U2, you're going to be on the next one.
• 1:10:08
  Yeah, you just rotate. Let's Yeah, ultimately it comes
• 1:10:10
  down to you. Don't have to do it.
• 1:10:17
  Hates to do it to him, but you got to do it.
• 1:10:19
  It's an understandable compromise.
• 1:10:22
  Yeah, and that really is all I have on this one.
• 1:10:29
  Like wasn't a long topic. It's just kind of something I
• 1:10:31
  was thinking about and like, I don't know, not a great way to
• 1:10:42
  end this. But like I just I, I guess.
• 1:10:44
  In conclusion, do I think the forever GM narrative is real?
• 1:10:49
  Yes. And even in in ideal scenarios,
• 1:10:53
  would it still be real? Yes, but are there things that
• 1:10:57
  we can do right now as a community to skew those back in?
• 1:11:04
  GM Saver? 100% yes.
• 1:11:08
  But to say that it doesn't exist, to say that like it's
• 1:11:12
  happening because it would happen like this anyway, like
• 1:11:14
  more people would want to be GM's forever, that shit's not
• 1:11:17
  true. Not for everybody, at least.
• 1:11:19
  And if that is you, don't assume that you're the majority, you
• 1:11:22
  know? I mean, never, never assume
• 1:11:25
  you're the majority, that's for sure.
• 1:11:27
  I I think part of the problem too is also that the the concept
• 1:11:34
  of the forever GM is framed very negatively when it doesn't
• 1:11:40
  inherently have to be a negative.
• 1:11:45
  Well, I don't think that it's, it's, I think it's difficult to
• 1:11:48
  say that it's it's skewed negatively.
• 1:11:50
  It is a negative thing because it speaks to a a greater
• 1:11:54
  underlying issue, which is burnout you.
• 1:11:58
  Know what I'm what I mean is that it's always framed in such
• 1:12:02
  a fashion that oh, if you only GM and you never get to be a
• 1:12:07
  player, that is inherently bad, which is not the case because if
• 1:12:14
  somebody just doesn't have any desire and is perfectly fine
• 1:12:17
  with GM ING all the time, then that's fine, right?
• 1:12:19
  Like it has this default assumption that it's negative
• 1:12:23
  when it doesn't have to be negative.
• 1:12:25
  Like I feel like focusing on the negative bit perpetuates the
• 1:12:31
  problem. Oh see I've I've taken this from
• 1:12:34
  step one as an argument not of I'm AGM and I never get to play.
• 1:12:39
  It's I run more than I get to play and I'm getting tired of
• 1:12:43
  running more than I get to play. I want to play as a player.
• 1:12:48
  Right, you're right. If you're, if you're tired of it
• 1:12:50
  and you want to be a player, that's different.
• 1:12:53
  But I'm, I'm saying the, the community as a whole always,
• 1:13:01
  always frames this statement in a negative light and making it
• 1:13:08
  always framed in a negative light makes it worse.
• 1:13:11
  Like basically saying that being a forever GM is bad makes people
• 1:13:17
  feel bad about GM ING, and then if they've GM Ed for a long
• 1:13:20
  period of time they start to feel almost like a weird
• 1:13:23
  subconscious guilt about it and then that puts it in like a
• 1:13:27
  weird perpetual cycle. Interesting.
• 1:13:29
  OK so you are actually kind of agreeing with OP here when he
• 1:13:31
  like they they talked about having like doubt or doubting
• 1:13:35
  themselves a little. Bit I'm not saying that it's
• 1:13:40
  always good or always bad, I'm just saying people should be
• 1:13:46
  careful about framing it negative by default, 'cause I
• 1:13:52
  feel like I always see when somebody brings up the phrase
• 1:13:56
  forever GM, they almost always mean it as a bad thing.
• 1:14:00
  I've never, I, I've, I very rarely, if ever see anyone say
• 1:14:05
  I'm a forever GM. But I like it that way, you know
• 1:14:08
  what I mean? Right.
• 1:14:09
  Well, so I think it it kind of is innately a bad thing when you
• 1:14:13
  look at it from the perspective of it's just another way of
• 1:14:16
  saying GM burnout if it's another.
• 1:14:20
  Way of saying well yeah, that's the thing I.
• 1:14:22
  Every, every person I've ever spoken to who are like, you
• 1:14:24
  know, I'm the forever GM. That's the like, I really wish
• 1:14:29
  one of my players would fucking step up so I can be a player for
• 1:14:33
  once. That's I would, I would go as
• 1:14:35
  far as say that is how it is most of the time.
• 1:14:38
  It's not that gaming a lot is bad.
• 1:14:40
  It's not that like, it's that GMs are saying there aren't
• 1:14:45
  enough people who are willing to play as GMs. And I want to be a
• 1:14:50
  player. If you don't want to be a
• 1:14:52
  player, you're not really part of that argument.
• 1:14:54
  You're not really part of that conundrum.
• 1:14:56
  And I think people lump them together, which I think is what
• 1:14:59
  O PS problem is. I guess what I'm saying is, I
• 1:15:05
  mean, yeah, I guess I'm sort of, I'm sort of airing on a little
• 1:15:07
  bit of an agreement with them. I guess what I'm saying is that
• 1:15:11
  I don't like that GM burnout and forever GM are becoming
• 1:15:17
  synonymous. I feel like that is a bad habit.
• 1:15:23
  That I can agree. Shouldn't be as synonymous as
• 1:15:26
  they are? But I also don't think like, I
• 1:15:29
  think forever GM began as a phrase to shorthand GM burnout.
• 1:15:37
  I think that was the inception of the idea of forever GM of
• 1:15:41
  someone who is been thrust in the position of running a game
• 1:15:44
  and probably did really like it at the start.
• 1:15:47
  But it's the the monotony of being like, all right, guys, we
• 1:15:50
  just finished the campaign, what are we doing next?
• 1:15:53
  And then it's crickets and it's like no one wants to run
• 1:15:57
  anything and it's more crickets and you go, all right, fine,
• 1:16:00
  I'll fucking figure it out. Yeah.
• 1:16:05
  I mean, so you know what? I think we should change the
• 1:16:07
  name. You have forever GMs derogatory.
• 1:16:10
  And then you have a career GM. Said the word non derogatory.
• 1:16:17
  Yeah, affectionate. Yeah, you have Career GM
• 1:16:19
  affectionate and forever GM derogatory.
• 1:16:22
  Yeah, I I get what you say. Yeah, I guess that's probably
• 1:16:25
  true. Yeah, probably it, it, it was
• 1:16:27
  born as a shorthand. I could certainly see that.
• 1:16:32
  I mean, I, I don't know, I don't think, I don't think you had any
• 1:16:38
  suggestions to how to fix the problem, right?
• 1:16:40
  Because I do feel like we should perhaps offer.
• 1:16:44
  Oh no, no, I mean, I brought them up a little bit.
• 1:16:47
  First things first, play different games, read different
• 1:16:51
  games. That's that's ultimately what, a
• 1:16:53
  what, 99.99999998% things come down to.
• 1:16:59
  If you don't like running a game, how many games do you know
• 1:17:02
  about running? If the answer is just D&D, read
• 1:17:05
  more fucking games. Yeah, if you look at other games
• 1:17:08
  there's a good chance you will not feel as burnt out as AGM if
• 1:17:11
  you find a game that jives with you better and how you run.
• 1:17:15
  Inversely, as a player, you should also be reading rule
• 1:17:19
  books to. Find a game you might want to
• 1:17:23
  run. Yeah, who never wants to run a
• 1:17:25
  game will find one that's literally Moon.
• 1:17:28
  She's going to run Kane in a few weeks like.
• 1:17:31
  Yeah. It's doable, you just got to
• 1:17:33
  find the right thing. That was the one, yes, that was
• 1:17:38
  the one. That was the main suggestion I
• 1:17:40
  was going to be give. Is that looking at other G
• 1:17:44
  looking at other, I was going to say other GMs what looking at
• 1:17:48
  other games will get your GM hackles are going because
• 1:17:54
  there's a good chance you will find a game that just drives
• 1:17:57
  with you better. Again, this this, this feeds
• 1:18:01
  back to that problem of everybody assuming that the
• 1:18:06
  fantasy Dungeon fucker game is the only kind of game in town
• 1:18:10
  because D&D is the king and so everyone just assumes that's how
• 1:18:13
  all tabletop games are when there are in fact many many,
• 1:18:17
  many many table got top games out there.
• 1:18:19
  There's tabletop games about being a fucking guy in an
• 1:18:23
  office, and there's tabletop games about being angry lesbians
• 1:18:26
  and a dungeon, and there's tabletop games about running
• 1:18:29
  robots and there's tabletop games about dying to the
• 1:18:32
  horrible manifestations of sin filled monsters.
• 1:18:36
  You got lots of options out there you.
• 1:18:38
  Know what's funny? There's a there's a PBTA game
• 1:18:40
  about being a professional wrestler.
• 1:18:41
  I can't remember what it's called.
• 1:18:43
  I know exactly what you're talking about.
• 1:18:44
  I'm I'm also playing the name but and that's exactly what
• 1:18:47
  you're talking about. I low key would play it.
• 1:18:49
  I'd I'd play in this. If you ran it, I'd play it for
• 1:18:52
  sure. Yes.
• 1:18:53
  And to be. Fair Luna's also a professional
• 1:18:55
  wrestler on the Indian circuit, so I know he could do it well.
• 1:19:01
  Yes. Oh God, what is that game
• 1:19:03
  called? Wrestling.
• 1:19:04
  I know, I know of of course I've Worldwide Wrestling.
• 1:19:10
  Yes, Worldwide Wrestling. That's the one you're looking
• 1:19:13
  for. Yeah, of course I've heard of
• 1:19:15
  that game of what a surprise. Anyway, yeah, there's there's
• 1:19:24
  games about fucking everything under the sun that isn't just
• 1:19:26
  fantasy dungeon fucking. So yeah, look at other shit.
• 1:19:31
  The other option, if you are the forever GM derogatory in this
• 1:19:38
  scenario and nobody else is that interested in running a
• 1:19:44
  different game other than D&D, but you really want to be a
• 1:19:49
  player, just hold your players hostage.
• 1:19:57
  Yeah. And what I mean by that is
• 1:20:00
  finish the campaign, look your players in the eye and go, OK,
• 1:20:06
  we're done now if you guys want to keep playing, someone else
• 1:20:11
  has to run because I need a break.
• 1:20:13
  I'm not running anything. End of discussion.
• 1:20:17
  If we want to keep playing, one of you guys can run something
• 1:20:20
  and I'll be a player, but I'm not running anything.
• 1:20:24
  No questions asked. I'm not running anything after
• 1:20:27
  this campaign is over. And you just hold them hostage.
• 1:20:30
  And you'd be surprised because you got to think about
• 1:20:33
  statistically, if you have four people at the table, good chance
• 1:20:36
  one of them will step up, right? One in four chance, not bad
• 1:20:40
  odds. So sometimes just hold those
• 1:20:44
  motherfuckers hostage because when your back's against the
• 1:20:47
  wall, you have no choice. And you really want to fucking
• 1:20:49
  play DED. You're like, fuck it, I will run
• 1:20:52
  it this time. I'm not saying you should do
• 1:20:55
  that every time, but it's absolutely an option to put in
• 1:20:58
  your back pocket, obviously. And, you know, frame it nicely.
• 1:21:05
  I don't know. Well, maybe not, I don't know,
• 1:21:07
  you know, your players. Maybe you should frame it like
• 1:21:08
  an asshole, but frame it in a way that your players will be
• 1:21:12
  receptive to it. Let's put it that way.
• 1:21:17
  Now you might say, what if no one wants to play it?
• 1:21:19
  Because there's literally a post, there's a comment under
• 1:21:21
  this post about I told my players I didn't want to run and
• 1:21:24
  then they all ghosted me. You can just get unlucky.
• 1:21:27
  That is a possibility. It is I would argue, I'm going
• 1:21:32
  to be honest, I would argue if you have a group where you're
• 1:21:38
  the GM and you say, all right, guys, campaign is done.
• 1:21:42
  We've this is, this is assuming that you ended the campaign with
• 1:21:48
  a satisfying conclusion, right? Like not, we're not assuming
• 1:21:52
  that things sputtered out or you burnt out and gave up or
• 1:21:56
  anything. We're assuming you had like a
• 1:21:57
  proper end of story, our campaign conclusion.
• 1:22:01
  If you have that conclusion and you look at your players and
• 1:22:05
  say, all right, the campaign's over.
• 1:22:07
  I'm not running anything for a while.
• 1:22:09
  So if anybody else, if you guys want to keep playing, somebody
• 1:22:12
  else has to run and they just get you, they just respond to
• 1:22:16
  you with crickets. Might not be for the the group
• 1:22:21
  for you, chief. Yeah, might need to look for
• 1:22:24
  another group. I'm gonna be honest, if they
• 1:22:25
  respond with crickets, might need to look for some new
• 1:22:29
  homies, you know, like, and I don't mean to be clear that that
• 1:22:35
  sounded especially mean. I don't mean stop talking to
• 1:22:38
  them as friends or whatever. Like, you could be friends with
• 1:22:40
  them, but they might not be your D&D friends.
• 1:22:44
  Maybe you know what I mean? Like they might, you might need
• 1:22:47
  to look for a different group because they're just not jiving
• 1:22:50
  with what you're putting out. Like you could have a friend
• 1:22:53
  who's like a, you know, a good buddy who you like play pool
• 1:22:57
  with and hang out at the bar with, but he's never played a
• 1:22:59
  video game a day in his life. So you're not going to ask him
• 1:23:02
  to hop on Fortnite with you. That's just not going to happen.
• 1:23:05
  But he's still your friend. He's just you don't do that
• 1:23:07
  activity with him. You could have a group of
• 1:23:10
  friends, and if they just look at you with crickets, in that
• 1:23:13
  scenario, they just might not be the right D&D buddies.
• 1:23:16
  You might just need to find a group with a different group of
• 1:23:18
  D&D buddies, or maybe it's just one or two people.
• 1:23:21
  This is the other thing. You could have a group of four
• 1:23:25
  and you look at them and you say, all right, I'm not running.
• 1:23:28
  So if you guys want to keep playing, somebody else has to
• 1:23:30
  run and they don't really say anything.
• 1:23:33
  And then one guy, you know, Bob or whatever Bob's is like, all
• 1:23:36
  right, well, I'm a head out. And then Bob leaves and everyone
• 1:23:40
  else sits there for a little while and goes, well, I mean, if
• 1:23:44
  Bob's not here, I might run because I don't know if I really
• 1:23:47
  like playing DND with Bob, but I'll run it for you guys.
• 1:23:50
  That can happen too, you know. So like, you know, sometimes
• 1:23:56
  the, the group gets the, the dynamic gets shifted around a
• 1:23:59
  little bit. It's all it's all about, you
• 1:24:05
  know, it's a, it's a, it's a fucking group activity at the
• 1:24:08
  day. It it cannot be done.
• 1:24:09
  Well, there are solo RPGs out there, but you know, it's
• 1:24:13
  primarily a group activity. If the dynamics not right for
• 1:24:17
  that particular activity, then the dynamics are not right.
• 1:24:20
  Like that's just kind of the end of it.
• 1:24:21
  Like I, I'm not going to, I'm trying to think of how to say
• 1:24:27
  this without putting anybody on blast.
• 1:24:31
  Like, OK, I'm not going to invite any of my friends to go
• 1:24:44
  work out with me because they're just not on that vibe.
• 1:24:48
  That doesn't mean I have an issue with them as as as
• 1:24:51
  friends. I just know that everybody else
• 1:24:53
  is not on the vibe that I am in that regard.
• 1:24:56
  So we just don't do that thing together.
• 1:24:58
  You know what I'm saying? To be fair to me, I don't ask
• 1:25:05
  people, but I also know how I am and I know that nobody else is
• 1:25:09
  really the way that I. You know what I mean?
• 1:25:14
  You know, so my thing with my thing with the gym was and I, I
• 1:25:16
  went to the gym with Luna for like 2 years straight is I won't
• 1:25:21
  ask me to do weird workouts. Like I'm not going to like, you
• 1:25:24
  know, there was one day where he was like, we're just going to do
• 1:25:26
  the cable machine all day. And I was like, no, it's
• 1:25:30
  shoulders and biceps for me today.
• 1:25:31
  I'm not, I'm not doing the hail machine.
• 1:25:32
  I'm going to do what the thing I do and I'm going to be here for
• 1:25:34
  like an hour and then I'm going the fuck home.
• 1:25:35
  I'm not here to be at the gym for three hours.
• 1:25:40
  OK, well, that's a we're not going to go down the workout
• 1:25:45
  thing because that's a whole other different conversation.
• 1:25:48
  But I just the the point, the point that I'm broadly making is
• 1:25:53
  that you can be a friend with a person and not be AD and D
• 1:25:57
  friend with a person. Yes.
• 1:25:59
  And sometimes you got to sometimes you got to sniff that
• 1:26:02
  vibe out a little bit. You got to get a feel for it.
• 1:26:09
  But sometimes, yeah, you just got to hold your friends
• 1:26:11
  hostage. It'd be that way.
• 1:26:14
  I might try that. I might try that the next go
• 1:26:16
  around. Holding them hostage.
• 1:26:18
  Yeah. It's you know it works more than
• 1:26:22
  you would think. Again, it's it is about the
• 1:26:25
  execution too though, right? Like how you hold them hostage,
• 1:26:32
  how you deliver the information. Well, I have a gun so.
• 1:26:37
  Perhaps don't do it that way. OK, OK, just check.
• 1:26:39
  Just check. Maybe not.
• 1:26:41
  Maybe not. Maybe not.
• 1:26:44
  Wait, wait. I was gonna.
• 1:26:45
  Say, dare you confuse me, gun on the table or gun on the table.
• 1:26:47
  I I feel like I'm getting I would.
• 1:26:49
  Say gun not on the table at first, right?
• 1:26:53
  Gun under the table. Under the table, yeah, we can go
• 1:26:56
  with under the table. And then if you need to put it
• 1:26:58
  on the table afterward, then you can, you know, you can think
• 1:27:00
  about it. Got you.
• 1:27:02
  Got you. OK, now you're thinking about
• 1:27:03
  portals. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:27:12
  Yeah, that was the I was. I just wanted to offer some
• 1:27:15
  cures to the problem in case anybody was curious about.
• 1:27:17
  No, no, I mean it's true. Those are those are my main 2
• 1:27:22
  tricks if you will. Yeah, I mean I think the are are
• 1:27:26
  the universal trick one read more games I think is.
• 1:27:29
  Read more games the one that comes up all the time.
• 1:27:32
  Yeah, it really is the like the great solution just to read more
• 1:27:37
  fucking games. It is.
• 1:27:39
  It is some powerful wizardry. Replace wizardry with another
• 1:27:43
  word. If you know what I'm.
• 1:27:45
  Saying that's wild, but if I were to offer a secondary
• 1:27:52
  solution. Well, tertiary in this case.
• 1:27:55
  Tertiary solution, yeah, I would say.
• 1:28:06
  Yeah, I mean, I, I, I hate to say this, but like, I'm going to
• 1:28:08
  go back to what I said before. Sometimes you got to tailor make
• 1:28:15
  your party and that might not always be the party with all
• 1:28:19
  your friends in it and that sucks.
• 1:28:24
  Or it just might not be the group of friends you expected.
• 1:28:29
  Yeah, yes, but it might, it might not be your original party
• 1:28:31
  is what I mean. Like the ones you guys you've
• 1:28:33
  been playing with for five plus years.
• 1:28:34
  You might be down a player or two, but you could have another
• 1:28:37
  2 character, you know, another two players who fit the five
• 1:28:40
  just as well, if not better. Yeah.
• 1:28:47
  Never given to the sunk cost, essentially ever.
• 1:28:49
  Be like I'm I'm too stuck in the weeds.
• 1:28:52
  Well, and sometimes it's just the game in question, right?
• 1:28:55
  If you're running a different game, if you went from playing
• 1:28:58
  Fantasy Dungeon Fuckers to playing, I don't know, communist
• 1:29:02
  Mecca space game, some people just might not be on the vibe
• 1:29:07
  for the mech game as much. So they're like, hey, I'll sit
• 1:29:10
  this campaign out. We did.
• 1:29:11
  Sometimes it's just going into Lancers.
• 1:29:13
  Exactly. Yeah.
• 1:29:14
  So sometimes people will just cycle out on their own, which is
• 1:29:20
  honestly a lot of the time best case scenario because then you
• 1:29:25
  don't have to awkwardly kick somebody out.
• 1:29:27
  It's usually better. If they're like not as
• 1:29:29
  interested in this game, that's usually better.
• 1:29:32
  Yeah, I mean, there is something to be saying, something to be
• 1:29:34
  said about being like just deciding we are playing a
• 1:29:36
  different game and letting the the letting the situation tailor
• 1:29:41
  itself. The group decide if they're into
• 1:29:44
  it or not. You know what's funny?
• 1:29:48
  Like it seems pretty clear that more players of mine would would
• 1:29:54
  prefer to be playing Monster Hearts full time than Lancer.
• 1:29:58
  And that makes me laugh because I offered Monster Hearts at the
• 1:30:03
  same time as Lancer. I said it was, it was one of
• 1:30:05
  these two games, right? And everybody like I like, no
• 1:30:12
  one really seemed into either. And you know, when I did give
• 1:30:15
  them the constant warning of like a Monster, Hearts can go
• 1:30:18
  weird places, they did go well, that mechs are a safer option
• 1:30:22
  even if I know less about them because I don't necessarily want
• 1:30:25
  to go weird places. And our plan to answer.
• 1:30:33
  Well, you know, I think Monster Hearts is one of those games
• 1:30:37
  that the upfront sales pitch is not the strongest true until you
• 1:30:46
  play it true. Like Lancer as a concept is like
• 1:30:52
  space Mecca mercenaries. That's a pretty like cool, easy
• 1:30:57
  sales pitch. Whereas, you know, teenage
• 1:31:01
  vampires with angst and feeling little bit of a harder sales
• 1:31:06
  pitch on the on the first round and fucking and fucking little
• 1:31:11
  trickier of a sales pitch on that on that initial, you know,
• 1:31:14
  the elevator pitch is is tougher.
• 1:31:16
  Yeah, it is fair. Which I think is honestly one of
• 1:31:20
  the main reasons that D&D is still the king of the industry,
• 1:31:24
  because Fantasy adventure Dungeon Fucker is a really easy
• 1:31:29
  elevator pitch. It is.
• 1:31:32
  It's just an easy one. Everybody can go, oh, I've
• 1:31:35
  watched Lord of the Rings and you're like, yeah, you know what
• 1:31:37
  I mean? It's just how it goes.
• 1:31:46
  OK, I, I think now I think we're done.
• 1:31:56
  You said now like we're about to go like do something else
• 1:31:58
  dramatic. We're not.
• 1:32:00
  We're not going anywhere after the.
• 1:32:01
  We're not doing anything. No, I mean I will be playing
• 1:32:03
  hell divers but like that's about it.
• 1:32:06
  Video games. Video games give us a, you know,
• 1:32:14
  give us a sub and on either YouTube or social media platform
• 1:32:18
  of choice. We don't really care anymore.
• 1:32:22
  Appreciate it. It'd be real nice and we'll see
• 1:32:26
  you next time when I definitely also don't do my homework until
• 1:32:30
  the last few seconds. TuneIn, next time for Isaiah,
• 1:32:36
  gets mad at some other random Internet guy.
• 1:32:39
  I do that a lot. I don't know.
• 1:32:43
  I literally, I got mad at a YouTube video earlier before we
• 1:32:46
  started recording because it was a guy who was building a Gundam
• 1:32:49
  kit and he like painted it looked, it looked gorgeous, but
• 1:32:52
  he didn't fucking hobby cement the pieces together so you could
• 1:32:55
  see the cracks in the plastic. And I just, I was just like,
• 1:32:58
  why? And you can't fix it now because
• 1:33:01
  then you'd have to completely fucking repaint it.
• 1:33:03
  And I, I just, it's like, you must have put dozens of hours
• 1:33:06
  into this and you forgot Step 2. You built the plane but didn't
• 1:33:12
  put in the engine. What is wrong with anywhere?
• 1:33:18
  I'm going to stop myself now before I go off again.
• 1:33:23
  I have nothing to add to this. That's fine, darling.
• 1:33:25
  Look, that's been us. We've been sessions cancelled.
• 1:33:27
  Peace, motherfuckers. I'm out.
• 1:33:29
  It has certainly been us.