Recently, I was accused of writing an opinionated blog based on my own experiences.

Seriously. That’s almost a verbatim quote.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Because I was thinking it too. “No s$&%. Of course, I just write my opinions based on my own experiences. That’s all anyone does. Anyone who doesn’t write boring old facts like two plus two equals four and the Declaration of Independence was signed in July of 1776.” Once you get past the basic fact, everything else is opinion and interpretation. And that’s entirely based on your own experiences.

Oh sure, you might think you have evidence for a given interpretation. But even then, you’re only writing based on your experience of that evidence. For example, in the three and a half decades I’ve been running role-playing games, I’ve run games for literally hundreds of players. I know, I once did a quick estimate thingy to see based on the number of ongoing campaigns I’d run for different people, the average number of convention and game store games and club games I’d run for strangers, one-off games for friends and family, that kind of thing. And since I started this Angry GM thing a decade ago, I have interacted with dozens of professional gamer designers and content creators and event professionals and thousands of amateur game masters all over the world. But those are all still just my experiences.

And when it comes to roleplaying games, there’s really no objective facts to talk about. Beyond s$%& like “Dungeons & Dragons was designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson and published by Gygax’s company, Tactical Studies Rules, Ltd. In 1974” and “in the current edition of D&D, to resolve an action, a player rolls a d20 and adds an ability modifier and then compares the result to a target number called a DC determined by the rules and, ultimately, by the GM who interprets and describes the result of the action.”

Those are facts. Facts are boring. And you don’t need me to tell you facts. You’ve got rulebooks.

Of course, the numbnuts who called me an opinionated blogger who writes only about his own experiences meant that as a dismissal. Because he — and another person — didn’t agree with something I wrote. Instead of engaging with my argument or coming up with a counterpoint or even considering that I might be right and they might be wrong, they instead went with the standard Internet Argument I Win Button of “well, your argument is just invalid because I said so.” It’s the equivalent of winning Rock, Paper, Scissors with a Sucker Punch to the Throat. And I can’t really complain because that’s how I always win Rock, Paper, Scissors.

Why am I bringing this up? I mean, after all, I’m beyond whining about morons on the Internet. I long ago came to terms with the fact that retards gonna retard and there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m bringing it up because this article’s one I’ve been mulling in my head for a while. And I’ve been trying to figure out how to write it. Because it’s basically an article about twos of things. Two issues that I hear about all the f$&%ing time. And two kinds of GMs that I hear from all the time. And, ultimately, it’s about how there’s two kinds of games.

Through outlines and drafts, I found that I kept inserting my own, personal value judgments into this s$&%. Basically, whenever I thought about the two kinds of GMs and the two kinds of games I wanted to talk about, my language kept implying that one was good and one was crap. One led to great games. The other led to garbage. But, the thing is, I knew — rationally and objectively — that both approaches — both games run by both GMs — were equally valid. And that I should discuss them dispassionately and let GMs decide for themselves which way to go. Though, ultimately, I would also have to admit that if GMs chose one direction, they’d have to get their advice from a different content creator because nothing I said was going to help them ever.

Fortunately, along came Internet A$&hole to remind me that there’s really no point in trying to be rational and objective about it. Subjectivity is implied and expected. And if you don’t expect it from basically any human being ever, you’re the moron. And if you’re going to dismiss something someone says purely because it’s subjective, you’re a moron who has no interest in not being a moron anymore. And that’s your problem.

But also, Internet A$&hole reminded me of something else. Something that I’m not going to admit. Because it’s actually so egotistical that even I feel bad saying it. But it is also utterly, provably true. Considering everything I’ve ever said on this blog, imagine how egomaniacal a statement must be that even I won’t say it. So please, don’t ask.

But just because something is egotistical, that doesn’t mean it isn’t also true. I mean, if Albert Einstein said he was probably one of the smartest physicists — or people — in the entire world, no one would argue. But they’d still think he was a bit of an a$&hole for saying it.

I will say this egotistical thing though. And it is this egotistical thing that actually makes me the great GM that I am. Even though I’m not actually that great at running games and have some definite weaknesses, I am still a great GM. And part of the thing that makes me a great GM is knowing that I’m better at running a great game than anyone sitting at my table. And that would be true even if there were other GMs at my table. Other great GMs. If I was running a game for Matt Mercer and Christopher Perkins and Tracy Hickman and Brendan Lee Mulligan and Gary F$&%ing Gygax, I’d still know I was better at running a great game than any of them. And yes, I consider Matt Mercer to be an excellent GM. Don’t get your panties in a wad.

But I’ll get back to that. Not the Mercer thing. The thing wherein I know I’m better at running a great game than anyone at my table. Even if I’m running games for objectively better GMs than myself.

Enough rambling and dancing around the point and shocking you with just how unbelievable massive my ego is. And also shocking you with weird, sudden tiny glimmers of humility mixed in. I want to talk about two issues and two kinds of GMs and two kinds of games and the fact that you need to make a conscious choice between those two and that one of them is objectively, provably better. But you can only make it by knowing you are better at running a great game than anyone sitting at your table.

Two Issues

Let me start with two things I hear dozens of times every f$&%ing month. Because people comment and e-mail and because I also seek out and lurk on forums and Reddit and social media spaces where GMs interact and just watch what they’re saying. Really. I do actually know how to shut my mouth. Believe it or not.

The first issue is one that a huge, huge majority of GMs consider to be the holy grail of GMing. “How do you make your players care?” How do you get your players to care about the world and the characters in it and the story? How do you get them to treat the game’s things — the places, the people, the events, and the things — like they’d treat real-world things — places, people, events, and things — instead of like constructs in a game? There’s a lot of s$&% wrapped up in this. Everything from taking the game seriously and paying attention, to not playing like a bunch of murderhobos, to not being a selfish performance-based thespian prick that only shows up to show off their anime furry self-insert fanfic character. But it all comes down to “getting the players to care about the world and its characters.” Got it?

The second issue seems to paralyze a good 50% of GMs. I call it “fear of players.” And basically, it’s typified by “I’d love to run that game or system or campaign, but I know my players would reject it.” Or sometimes, “I’d really like to limit the options in my game, but I know my players would complain.”

This is a big, big thing. It affects lots of people. In fact, it affects people without their even knowing it. Let me ask you a question:

Can you say no to any of your players? Or to all of them? About anything?

If a player came to you and asked to use some stupid furry anime race they invented themselves using Tasha’s Cauldron of Stupid Bulls$&%, could you say no? Would you? If you were starting a campaign and your players said, “we want to play D&D” but you were sick of running D&D, could you say no? If you wanted to try some crazy campaign idea some Internet a$%hole published and your players demanded you run the same standard D&D crap you always run, could you say no? If a player wanted to launch a fireball spell at an underwater target and then drink a potion underwater, could you — correctly — say no?

And understand that I’m not asking you whether you’d explain your reasons to your players? Or whether you’d negotiate or make them understand? I’m not asking for a lecture about how you could, theoretically say no, but in practice your players might leave and then you lose out on a game too and therefore the reality of social contract bulls$&% is that everything is a negotiation. I’m asking you, could you say:

No. I am not going to allow that. I am not going to run that. I am going to run this.

And whatever else they said, whatever argument they leveled, just stick to your guns and say “no?”

Could you do that?

If the answer isn’t an honest, heartfelt “yes, absolutely, I can say ‘no’ and say nothing else,” congratulations, you’re a playerphobic.

Now, I know people are going to misunderstand this. They’re going to take this as me advising GMs to behave like egomaniacal a$&holes. To behave like me. I’m not. Really. But, I don’t want to distill my advice by providing the more complex, more nuanced point and including a bunch of advice for dealing with your players. Because, frankly, if you can’t be an egomaniacal a$&hole, you can’t run a great game. And I’m worried that if I give you a way to lie to yourself — to trick yourself into thinking you’re an egomaniacal a$&hole without having to hold that believe in your heart and without having to behave like one — if I give you the chance to lie to yourself, you will. Because no one wants to be an egomaniacal a$&hole. Except people who already are. And they don’t need my help.

So, for the purposes of this article, either you — as a GM — can tell your players “no” and leave it at that, no matter what the request and no matter how much they whine and argue or you’re a playerphobe. And that makes you a bad GM.

So, two issues are endemic in the GMing community. One is wishing players would give a s$&% about the game world as a world. The other is being afraid to say no to the players in no uncertain terms no matter what the request. And now I’m going to do something I never, ever do. I’m going to skip ahead to the conclusion. I’m going to save you the trouble of reading the next 2000 words.

The two issues are correlated. Strongly. Playerphobes have an infinitely harder time creating games their players care about. And GMs who have no trouble laying down the law tend to end up with emotionally engaged players who care about the world.

Let me tell you about my last game session…

Tax Code Gaming

My last game session was an interlude. The players in my D&D 3.5 AOWG had just reached a new town and they were doing all the new town s$&%. Finding inns, selling treasure, making contacts, exploring, seeking trainers, that kind of crap. At the end of the session, they had three possible goals in front of them:

• Go find a scuttled trade ship and recover items from its hold while killing the murlocks that had scuttled it and were disrupting river traffic.
• Explore a draconic ruin wherein a magic arch held the secrets for teleportation and planar magic.
• Escort a priest into the dangerous frontier so he could tend some forgotten roadside shrines to the party cleric’s deity.

I should also point out that each of the quests was offered by one of the party’s trainer-NPC contacts. The murlock thing came from the legitimate businessman the party rogue was trying to get in good with. But also provided the party paladin and cleric with a chance to kill evil and protect innocents respectively.

The draconic ruin thing was mentioned by the wizard’s patron, but also provided a chance for wealth because the party got rich the last time they explored a draconic ruin.

And the escort quest came from the party paladin’s buddy but the priest was dedicated to the party cleric’s patron deity.

Do you know what they chose? They chose to investigate changes to the local tax code.

I s$%& you not. Technically, they chose the murlock thing. But only after they decided to spend some time investigating changes to the town’s tax code. And they mainly chose the murlock thing because they felt that the river traffic issue was probably causing some of the tax code changes.

What’s this tax code thing? Well, in brief, when the party arrived in town — laden with treasure they couldn’t sell in the local podunk village they’d been living in previously — they discovered the town had a somewhat aggressive tax policy. There were taxes to get into the town, more taxes if you had animals or carts — the party has a pack donkey and a dog — taxes to cross between certain neighborhoods, and because of the high taxes, all buying and selling had extra fees and costs. Every price for every good in town was bumped up by 10%. And everything the party sold, they lost 10% on the sale. At least. The moneychanger who offered to exchange their ancient platinum coins for money they could spend tried to take a 30% fee.

The baroness who owned the town and the surrounding lands and the lord mayor of the town had also cracked down in other ways. They’d sent tax collectors to close all the nearby markets where farmers gathered to trade so the farmers would have no choice but to buy and sell in the town proper, thus forcing them to pay gate taxes and spend days traveling and money on inns and s$&% like that. And the town’s guards were occasionally, randomly confiscating valuables to keep the lord mayor happy. “Oh, that’s a choice item; so kind of you traveler to offer it as a gift to the lord mayor.” That kind of shakedown crap.

And it was all terribly inconvenient. Annoying, even. The taxes weren’t very high. The party had scored thousands of gold pieces in treasure and the taxes were measured in copper pieces. The 10% transaction fees were nothing the party couldn’t easily afford. And all the treasure was “found items” anyway. If I hadn’t told the party at every turn how much they were being bilked for, they’d never have even known that they could have gotten 1500 gp instead of 1200 gp for the platinum coins. But I did.

The party spent a lot of time figuring out which inns to stay at — they split up even — based on what neighborhoods each of them were doing business in and where they had to pay taxes. They thought about where to store their valuables so they didn’t have to carry them past the guards and risk having something confiscated. They even chose not to sell some treasure and not to buy some supplies just to avoid the fees. And the party wizard used some clever illusions to sneak their treasure into the town at great risk.

Meanwhile, at even greater risk, the cleric stopped the very angry chief of police from beating a pickpocket to death in the streets. But that’s another story.

What should have been an hour of downtime was actually an annoying, obnoxious game of being nickel-and-dimed and doing a bunch of bookkeeping and solving a logistical puzzle to save a couple of silver pieces.

In the end, the party was pissed off. But they weren’t pissed off at me. They were mad at the town. Rather, the wizard was mad at the town. She — and her player — were seething by the end. It didn’t help that her professional colleagues had been rude to her because they were uppity scholars and she comes up from the streets. But she was mad. Mad at the lord mayor. Mad at the baroness. Tired of dealing with all that s$&%. The other players were concerned. And curious. Because, first, while the town’s peasants weren’t being starved or oppressed or anything that bad, everyone was struggling a bit. Times were just a little harder than they had to be and it was all any of the NPCs could talk about. Meanwhile, all the tax crackdowns had been instituted in the last few months. NPCs commented on how the baroness and the lord mayor had gotten a lot harsher in just the past season.

The players were responding emotionally. They were angry at the game’s world and its characters. They were concerned for the game’s world and its characters. And they were curious about the game’s world and its characters. To the point where the standard D&D adventures seemed almost secondary. It’s not that they didn’t want to explore ruins and kill murlocks, it’s that they didn’t feel they could just walk away from this issue. Either out of spite, concern, or curiosity, they had to know more.

Now here’s the thing: if I told you to annoy the s$&% out of your players with taxes and bookkeeping and stealing their treasures and I suggested you wasted a whole session pushing them to their frustrated breaking point, you’d call me nuts. You’d say I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m an a$&hole and I just happen to have a group of masochists with Stockholm syndrome who are too dumb to walk away and find a good game.

Or maybe you’d think I have a group of particularly amazing, special players who, unique among TTRPGers actually do get invested and involved and actually care and who will put up with these sorts of annoyances for the sake of a game world that feels like a real place. One they can care about it.

Now, I do have amazing, special players. I love them dearly. But don’t tell them I said that. The thing is, though, they’re not that unique. Not to me at least. Because, for at least twenty years, this has been my game running MO. And, as I noted above, I’ve had lots and lots of players sit at my table. And no, the turnover isn’t because I drive away as many players as I keep with this crap. I have had a few players walk away from my games over the years because I wasn’t giving them what they wanted. It happens. But it’s a very small number. And the separations have always been friendly enough that we were able to talk about the whys and wherefores. Except in one case.

If you get me drunk someday at a convention, I’ll tell you the number one reason people leave my games. The few who have left my games. I do keep track of this s$&%.

Anyway…

I have special, amazing players. But that’s not why I can get away with this s$%&.

Two Kinds of Games

I said I wanted to talk about two issues, two kinds of games, and two kinds of GMs. Let’s talk about two kinds of games. The Expression Game and The Fantasy Game. Now, if you’ve been slumming around this site long enough, you recognize those two words. They are, in fact, two of the eight basic emotional reasons people play games. Player motivations, basically. It’s all part of a game design theory called the MDA Design Approach. Basically, players enjoy games because the game provides certain emotional qualities. Aesthetics. Game designers, of course, can only create rules and systems. Mechanics. The Mechanics are translated to Aesthetics through gameplay. Through Dynamics.

In a nutshell, it works like this: a certain player really enjoys interacting with other people. That’s one of the major reasons they play games. A game designer designs a system where each player chooses a character class and each class has specific strengths and weaknesses. It’s not possible to win the game without creating synergies between the different characters. When players play the game, to win, they have to work together and cover each other’s weaknesses and enhance each other’s strengths. Thus creating a sense of teamwork and camaraderie that makes the team player feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Years ago, I wrote a really long, detailed discussion about all this crap. And that’s still out there. I’m not going to rehash it here. But, my understanding of things has evolved since I wrote that. And one thing I’ve come to understand is that Expression as a gameplay aesthetic — particularly as TTRPG gamers and game masters understand it — does not play well with the other aesthetics. Especially in multiplayer, team-based games like D&D.

See, most successful games don’t focus on one just one gameplay aesthetic. And most gamers don’t seek just one gameplay aesthetic either. People enjoy games that satisfy combinations of aesthetics that are particularly satisfying to them. I mean, I love Discovery — the exploration aesthetic — but I also can’t play that Outer Wilds thing even though it’s pure exploration. And I also found Ori and the Blind Wisps unsatisfying. Because I’m also a big Challenge gamer. The gameplay in Outer Wilds is just sort of nonexistent. And Ori is pretty basic.

But what sometimes happens when you’re designing a game is one aesthetic grinds against another. For example, Abnegation — the shut off your brain and grind aesthetic — and the Challenge aesthetic — the do your best and earn your victory aesthetic — kind of work against each other. Some games do manage to switch back and forth between the two — like a turn-based JRPG which is 90% pressing Fight in random encounters and 10% screaming at boss fights that take six hours to lose. But mostly, those two aesthetics do not play well together. You can have one or the other. You can switch back and forth between them. But you can’t do both at once.

Expression — the aesthetic wherein you play to express yourself creatively — doesn’t play well with the other aesthetics. And that’s for two reasons. One, because constraints of any kind tend to rub creatives the wrong way. And two, because self-expression is ultimately a selfish motive. It’s very hard to share the experience with others except in terms of performing for a group. And I’ve talked about this before in terms of selfish roleplaying. Gamers who sit down at the table to show off their character for a captive audience.

It has become de rigueur to tell people that RPGs are all about creativity and collaborative storytelling. As a team, as a group, you get together and create. And then share the creation together. An RPG is essentially a group creativity exercise.

And this is the part where, if I gave a crap about being objective and rational, I’d say that’s a perfectly valid approach to roleplaying. But truth is, I don’t believe that. I believe creative expression is something that also happens in RPGs. And it’s fun. Players should be creative. And they should enjoy that aspect of roleplaying gaming. But I don’t think it’s a primary gameplay aesthetic in RPGs. And I don’t think RPGs should aspire to put Expression first. Why?

The most important reason is that RPGs are, first and foremost, team-based games. They’re a mix of competitive gameplay — players against the world — and cooperative gameplay — players on a team. Self-expression — create your thing then show off for an audience — isn’t team-based. At best, it’s about passing the microphone around. I’m not saying it’s impossible to be creative as a group, but the way most RPGers understand — and present — self-expression as a gameplay aesthetic, it’s an inherently selfish act of create-and-portray play.

The other reason is that most of the other aesthetics rely heavily on constraints and structures. Especially Narrative, Fantasy, and Challenge. And constraints and structures tend to hinder the Expressive types. Again, it’s possible to create within constraints — useful even — but that’s not the same as unfettered creativity. If you put Expression first, it’s going to break almost everything else.

And that’s really what this is about. It’s not about whether an aesthetic fits into the game or not. Whether a game can serve an aesthetic. It’s about what you do when you have to choose which aesthetic takes priority. And game designers have to make that choice all the time. My point is just that, of all the aesthetics that might be considered primary aesthetics in TTRPGs — because, sorry, Abnegation and Sense Pleasure aren’t things TTRPGs do well — Expression’s the one that’s going to force the most compromises. That is, the higher you prioritize Expression, the more everything else is going to suffer.

This ain’t opinion. It’s objective fact. It comes from the very definitions of the aesthetics. You can argue about whether or not it’s worth prioritizing Expression over the other aesthetics. You’d be wrong, but you can argue it. But you can’t argue that Expression grinds against Fantasy, Narrative, and Challenge especially hard because those aesthetics rely heavily on structures and constraints, and Expression is hindered by those same structures and constraints.

This leads to two kinds of games GMs can run. There’s the Expression-first game wherein it’s all about inviting the players to create and portray characters and play with the ultimate creativity toy. And there’s the Other game. The Fantasy game wherein you invite the players to lose themselves in another reality. A world they can care about.

The Clown and the Game Designer

Ultimately, the game you’re going to run depends on why you sit down to run the game in the first place. What you think your job is. Lots of GMs have this toxic belief that their job is to facilitate their players’ fun. To entertain their players. To make their players happy. To show their players a good time. Now, it probably seems crazy to call that toxic. But it really, really is. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with a selfless desire to entertain. Believe it or not, I have a strong desire to entertain others that drives me to the table. I like when people are having a good time. And I like making that happen. But I’m not dumb enough to think that’s what my job is as a GM. That happens as a consequence of my running a game.

Really, my job is to run a great game. I’m a game designer. And a game engine. My job’s not to make people smile and make people happy. It’s not to foster creativity. It’s not to collaborate. It’s to run a great game. And I have to believe I can do that or else I won’t. I have to sit down knowing that I know what it takes to run a great game. Confident in my ability to design a satisfying gameplay experience. And, most importantly, knowing that my players aren’t there to design a great game. To create a satisfying gameplay experience. They’re there to play a game.

Even if those players are GMs themselves — even if they’re great GMs — at the moment they’re sitting at my table where I’m running a game, they’re there to play a game. Not to create a great gameplay experience. When I’m sitting behind the screen, I’m the one creating the great gameplay experience. I’m the only one creating that experience. And I’m the only one who can.

A GM who believes that is a GM who is willing to take risks. It’s a GM who is willing to do things that seem like terrible ideas because they’ll lead to great games. It’s a GM who’s willing to put the good of the game ahead of the player’s individual, stupid desires. Because players want stupid things. Even players who are great GMs almost always want the wrong things. Things that’ll give them a laugh in the moment, but that’ll undermine the gameplay experience in the long term. And even GMs who are great GMs can’t run the game I’m running. Because the game I’m running is unique to me. It’s a game only I can run. If I start letting them f$%& with it, they’ll f$&% it up. Gary Gygax and Matt Mercer can run great games, but they can run the great games I can run. And if they try, they’ll make a mess. As surely as if I try to run Matt Mercer’s game.

A GM has to be so confident in his ability to run a great game that he can say no to any player at any time without explanation because the game he runs will be better than whatever crap that player is asking for. Once the player stops sulking — and they will stop sulking — they won’t be able to help but have a great time.

Now, there’s a risk to all of this. Because being a GM is risky. There’s the risk that your great game won’t be great. Or that it’ll be the wrong game for your players. Or that you’ll screw something up. Those are risks. But you can’t run a great game if you’re not willing to risk running a terrible game. If you hold yourself back out of fear, no GMing advice will ever help you. So, if you can’t say right now that you know better than everyone at your table how to run a great game and you can’t say no to any of them about anything ever, you might as well close this site down and never come back. Because you can’t run the game you really want to run. Whatever game you run? It won’t be in your control.

Basically, as a GM, you can be a clown or you can be a game designer. A clown puts on a show and makes sure everyone has a laugh. A game designer designs a great game and puts it in front of people confident that it will give them a great time. But sometimes fails.

But I’ll also say this: playerphobia is totally overstated. Players will sulk. Players will object. They will argue. But if you do everything you do because you know you can run a great game, they’ll come around. Very, very few players actually walk because you refused to run the system they wanted. Very, very few walk because they’re not allowed to play the race they wanted or the class or because you told them no. And the ones who do walk? Well, honestly, your game’s better off without them and they’re the ones who lose out on a great game.

A great GM can always find a new player. Hell, new players find great GMs. If for no other reason than the fact that great GM’s players brag about their games to other players. Which leads to other players asking to join up.