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Mauve Shirt
2013-09-08, 11:16 AM
I'm playing two different games right now. One of them is with a DM who values contributions to the story he wants to tell, and is very agreeable about the creation of different characters. The other DM is very interested in destroying the party. He pits us against great monsters and we have some good fights, but at the same time he designs his monsters specifically to beat our abilities. I'm an illusionist and he pits us against monsters with tremorsense almost every game, for example.

Do you DMs prefer beating the players up or creating a story? Which do you players prefer?

kidnicky
2013-09-08, 12:06 PM
It has to be cooperative. If the DM really wants to win, he can. That's not really a game. It would be like playing Super Mario Bros and at the end the game just freezes and yoj jave to unplug your NES. It's not "challengjng" it's "broken".

Ravens_cry
2013-09-08, 12:25 PM
The trouble with a vs. attitude is the DM runs the game. There is literally no challenge in going for an all out kill-em-all approach.
Now, if you want to run a fair rolls game and let the players screw up as they screw up, that's one thing. It's a legitimate style of play, though a little too hard-nose for my tastes, but it can be a lot of fun for the right group.
But if you are going into the game with the mindset of "Oh, am I going to wreak their @#$% tonight!" you are just being a petty little tyrant.
No one will have fun except you, and, soon, neither will you because no one will play with a DM who will do anything to increase their death toll.
It's one thing to be tough and fair, it's another when you cheat in the monster's favour because you feel you haven't done your job unless it ends in a TPK.

Mastikator
2013-09-08, 12:29 PM
Why not both? A cooperative storytelling in which the DM is trying to eat the PCs. It's how I try to DM and it's how I prefer to be DM'd.

I can't really stand a DM who will sacrifice verisimilitude to kill the PCs though, just lure them into a trap/situation you can't figure a way out and see if they can.

Razanir
2013-09-08, 12:31 PM
It depends. Normally I'd prefer cooperative (though with no small amount of difficulty). On the other hand, some adventures *cough*Tomb of Horror*cough* are clearly meant to try to destroy them.

Frozen_Feet
2013-09-08, 12:34 PM
False dichtomy. You can have both at once, or neither. I mix elements of both.

Ravens_cry
2013-09-08, 12:40 PM
It depends. Normally I'd prefer cooperative (though with no small amount of difficulty). On the other hand, some adventures *cough*Tomb of Horror*cough* are clearly meant to try to destroy them.
Yeah, and that's why I don't play Gygaxian dungeons, and even then, Tomb of Horrors was winnable, in theory. Yes, I know he out and out said, 'No, don't play like this', but damn it if the rules didn't suggest otherwise. How many cursed items literally had no way of knowing they were cursed, but 'some schmuck tries the damn thing on'? Heck, even items that were good, for one class and/or alignment could be like this, again, with no way of knowing.

False dichtomy. You can have both at once, or neither. I mix elements of both.
Actually, no it isn't. Verses the characters would be false dichotomy.

Rhynn
2013-09-08, 12:40 PM
Why not both? A cooperative storytelling in which the DM is trying to eat the PCs. It's how I try to DM and it's how I prefer to be DM'd.

I can't really stand a DM who will sacrifice verisimilitude to kill the PCs though, just lure them into a trap/situation you can't figure a way out and see if they can.

I'm the same. I run a world and try to challenge the PCs, throwing boxes of wrenches at their gears (preferrably wrenches they left lying around), and the players get to tell me stories with their choices.

"Cooperative storytelling" implies all sorts of things I don't agree with, like the GM trying to keep the PCs alive (for any reason; player investment, story involvement, etc.). I try not to alter what I've created, either to harm or help the PCs.

Tengu_temp
2013-09-08, 12:47 PM
Cooperative storytelling, but with challenging fights so the players will have a feeling of accomplishment when they win, instead of "eh, I knew we'd win anyway".

A "DM vs players" mentality never results in a good game, and even many oldschool DMs (Spoony, for example) admit it.

Frozen_Feet
2013-09-08, 01:01 PM
Actually, no it isn't. Verses the characters would be false dichotomy.

Wrong. You can play against each other while still trying to build a story together. A GM can be very allowing of character, plotlines and ideas while still doing everything he can to destroy, ruin and nullify them.

The key word is "can". Unlike what lot people here say, "Rule 0" is neither absolute or universal. The GM does not necessarily have limitless power to oppose the players.

Craft (Cheese)
2013-09-08, 01:06 PM
I reinterpret the "DM vs. the Players" idea: Instead of the DM struggling to try to make the players lose, the DM struggles to make the players feel a particular emotion. Just having a monster show up that kills the PCs is easy; It takes a lot more effort to make the players **** their pants when that monster shows up.

Ravens_cry
2013-09-08, 01:18 PM
Wrong. You can play against each other while still trying to build a story together. A GM can be very allowing of character, plotlines and ideas while still doing everything he can to destroy, ruin and nullify them.

The key word is "can". Unlike what lot people here say, "Rule 0" is neither absolute or universal. The GM does not necessarily have limitless power to oppose the players.
They does. Nothing is stopping the DM from saying, "And you all take 1000d6 damage, because a nuke falls at your feet. No, I don't care that you are all level 1, make new characters. Let's do that again!"
They just will lose the players that way.
Hence, Rule -1: No Players, no game.
This a good article (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/checkfortraps/7608-The-Gamemaster-Is-Satan) on what I mean.

Frozen_Feet
2013-09-08, 01:19 PM
That is an interesting outlook. I do often do that, but didn't think to put it in those terms. I know I've tried helluva lot to confuse, terrify, upset or demoralize my players. And before someone comes in and cries I'm the most awful person ever, I have to ask: how do you ever run a succesful horror scenario without trying to trigger such emotions? :smalltongue:

EDIT:
They does. Nothing is stopping the DM from saying...

... expect rules of the game. Nothing prevents a player from saying "my character leaps to the moon and nukes the adversary with thousand missiles!" either, expect, you know. The rules. Rule 0 is not universal and not absolute. There are games where the GM is not God, and gets laughed out and replaced if he does something like that.

JoshuaZ
2013-09-08, 01:22 PM
More cooperative story-telling, but if the PCs are up against an intelligent opponent who knows something that can still be quite bad. For example, if there's some obnoxious opposing force, they might deliberately recruit monsters with tremorsense. That's very different than monsters just happening to have tremorsense even when they are just random encounters or things hanging out in a dungeon.

Ravens_cry
2013-09-08, 01:26 PM
... expect rules of the game. Nothing prevents a player from saying "my character leaps to the moon and nukes the adversary with thousand missiles!" either, expect, you know. The rules. Rule 0 is not universal and not absolute. There are games where the GM is not God, and gets laughed out and replaced if he does something like that.
In any game a GM should be laughed at for pulling that kind of stunt. That's my point. Because you can do something does not mean you should.
Besides, the PC's have restrictions within the rules on what they can and can not do. The DM, technically, does not. If they didn't, how could they adjudicate situations the rules don't cover or glosses over?

InQbait
2013-09-08, 01:30 PM
This may make me look like a bad GM or something, but whenever I play with a certain person (I'll just nickname him Loki) he always wants to be an OP evil character. He wants to get away with way too much crap, and I find it annoying and challenging to properly limit him. Should I put too much obstacle in his way, he whines and complains. Should I put not enough obstacle in his way, I get upset and don't want to GM him anymore because it always results in some greedy scheme coming to fruition or some atrocity against one or more NPCs. It makes me really angry and it makes me not want to GM anymore. I feel forced into the whole "GM vs. the Player Characters" thing because of the PLAYER. I would like to do a cooperative storytelling thing with the players, but all Loki wants to do is act like a major jerk to anyone in my game world and conquer it all. So, screw it :smallannoyed:

Ravens_cry
2013-09-08, 01:41 PM
If you are having that much trouble, try out of character solutions first, like talking to them after the session and giving some honest feedback. If worst comes to worst though, you may have to tell them that they aren't welcome when you are DMing. You are supposed to have fun too and that kind of player doesn't sound fun for you or even the other players.

Tengu_temp
2013-09-08, 02:01 PM
This may make me look like a bad GM or something, but whenever I play with a certain person (I'll just nickname him Loki) he always wants to be an OP evil character. He wants to get away with way too much crap, and I find it annoying and challenging to properly limit him. Should I put too much obstacle in his way, he whines and complains. Should I put not enough obstacle in his way, I get upset and don't want to GM him anymore because it always results in some greedy scheme coming to fruition or some atrocity against one or more NPCs. It makes me really angry and it makes me not want to GM anymore. I feel forced into the whole "GM vs. the Player Characters" thing because of the PLAYER. I would like to do a cooperative storytelling thing with the players, but all Loki wants to do is act like a major jerk to anyone in my game world and conquer it all. So, screw it :smallannoyed:

That's less a playstyle choice and more a case of a jerk player. If a player wants to ruin your game, feel free to lay punishment on him. Or just, you know, warn to kick him out of the game if he doesn't straighten out.

Zahhak
2013-09-08, 02:55 PM
Our games depend on our DM. Our usual DM tends towards "collaborative story telling" with a definite "don't be surprised if you die during gameplay". He makes the combats, and if we cannot hack it, so be it. But, there's usually only one fight a session, and it'll last usually half an hour out of a 6-8 hour game and one fight towards the end that'll last 3-4 hours.

We have another player who runs sometimes. He ends much more towards "vs. the players". The combats may not be lethal, but they may be 30-50% of any session. Of course, they're never very long combats, just there's a lot of them. They don't last very long, because I stop caring. There's was once a session long combat. I spent most of it playing on the internet because I did not give a crap about the slowly progressing dice rolls.

On the occasion when I run, less combat, more high stakes political negotiations.

Tim Proctor
2013-09-08, 03:00 PM
I try to have adventures or encounters designed for one PC to shine while I nullify the rest, and rotate through the list.

So if I have a Dwarven Fighter in Full Plate with a Heavy Shield then I'll have them fight in water, if we have a Thief with massive Sneak Attack damage they can fight something without discernible anatomy, if we have a Cleric I want to make sure its not Undead and that it is burst damage so he can only heal each round, but that Bard shines throw by recalling ancient lore that allows them to win the day.

I usually play against the players in that sense, but I always stick with the rules and always ensure that the players have an out (and that out is someone different each encounter).

Vitruviansquid
2013-09-08, 03:07 PM
I play cooperatively with the players when we are on the "story portion" of the game because I want the players to feel invested in the story, feel like they have agency in my fantasy world, and feel like I'm not railroading them (though I admit I usually am, anyways). But then, I try to give the players hell when we whip out the map and do a combat because I want to challenge the players and make an interesting tactical battle game. Because that's also good.

Mauve Shirt
2013-09-08, 03:47 PM
I like fights and being challenged, but what I don't like is never ever getting a chance to shine. If I'm always stuck in situations where my wizard can't use her magic to any effect, it's like, what's even the point of playing this game?

Vitruviansquid
2013-09-08, 03:52 PM
If the only way the GM can challenge a certain type of character is by shutting down what that character does, then it's a poorly designed system and you should consider some kind of houseruling or playing a different system.

erikun
2013-09-08, 03:57 PM
False dichtomy. You can have both at once, or neither. I mix elements of both.
I have to agree, at least in this case. On the one hand, we have a GM who is very willing to listen to other players and incorporate suggestions into the game. On the other hand, we have a GM who is actively challenging players. I don't see why a GM could not do both at the same time.

There are systems where it would present a conflict. In games where the players are intended to generate challenges for themselves in exchange for some in-game currency, such as Luck/Fate points, then having every fight be considerably difficult does not allow them to do so.

It can also cause problems if the players don't want to be challenged all the time, but that'd be an issue with the "Vs the Players" approach mixed with anything at that point.

originalginger
2013-09-08, 04:07 PM
As a DM, I would never engineer my encounters to regularly put the party as a whole at a disadvantage, but I will be sure that nearly EVERY encounter puts some of the party at a marked disadvantage, while other party members will be particularly effective. If I can ensure that 1/2 of the party is unconscious and the other half is at 1/4 HP and entirely out of daily and encounter powers at the end of an adventure, than I feel I have done my job.

Over the course of a series of encounters, I try to ensure that every player will feel helpless at some point, and every player will get a chance to shine at another point. The key is allowing all players to be an asset to his or her allies, having to protect the others and assist them in tight situations, while also ensuring that all of them have to rely on the others to survive.

While I am building encounters, I am on the side of the players, and thinking of how to make them engaging, tense, enjoyable, and most importantly, fair. While running encounters, the PCs are my bitter enemy, and I do all I can to make them die in horrible and ghastly ways. With my group, that mindset encourages cooperation, and facilitates the cooperative storytelling elements of the game.

valadil
2013-09-08, 04:13 PM
I can have fun playing both. But I need to know the type if game in advance. I don't want to play the conman with layer upon layer of cover stories for false identities in ToH.

As a GM I'm almost purely the interactive storyteller type. Weaving stories together is the satisfying part of GMing for me. Beating down the players when I can legally use anything in the MM just doesn't hold my interest.

QuintonBeck
2013-09-08, 04:18 PM
Being a newer DM I'm still finding my balance in regards to combat after running 2 shortish (about 4/5 months each) games. My favorite combat was one where the players bungled themselves into POing a very important guy who had 4 Monk bodyguards who were in fact 1 level above the PCs (cause, hey they're just monks right?) Anyway, this being a newbie party none were very optimized and my monks nearly TPKed the party even after losing two of their number and this ended up being the best most enjoyable fight for me and the players.

Now, this may seem like I favor the adversarial approach but all my previous encounters I had thrown at the party had been curb stomped and had been quite underwhelming and seeing the party actually worry and have to think and fight with their all was way cooler for me and them. They talked about the monk fight throughout the rest of the campaign and when I threw in the surviving 2 monks who had escaped having tracked them down they nearly shat themselves with fear and while that fight wasn't nearly as rough there was satisfaction for them and for me in their defeat of them this second time.

Craft: (Cheese) really hit the nail on the head, it isn't necessarily about killing the players or overpowering them it's using the fights to establish a mood and a deeper setting and if that means whooping up on them so be it.

SilverStar101
2013-09-08, 10:41 PM
I have been told and also found myself that cooperative storytelling is much harder for the DM to design and often makes for a quite heavy role playing style, depending on the DM though. Something more like a hack and slash traditional style is the easiest way to design a campaign and doesn't require as much work or commitment from the DM.

I had a DM who was attempting more cooperative storytelling approach and after a few weeks he became so stressed out about it that he backed out of being a DM for a while and ended up kicking out one of our players, all because he had been distracted by other things in the rest of his life and wasn't able to put enough time into designing an immersive campaign that all the PCs wanted.

I usually lean my campaign(s) to be more to the heavy RP style but in a way that there are still well-rounded PCs in all areas. And the only reason I feel I can pull that off is because I have allot of spare time and commitment to making the PCs feel they are immersed in a fully detailed world I have built.

I think that it is mostly because one DM may be more committed than the other or maybe it could just be a matter of preference. I prefer heavy RP style for playing and orchestrating, but I know it can also be personal preference instead of what I was saying about time constraints and the like.

Hope I could help answer your questions!

tasw
2013-09-09, 12:41 AM
definitely a false dichotomy.

I run sandbox games. My players decide where to go and what to do out of many plot hooks that lead to something.

However the bad guys want to win too. I dont follow the CR system of lots un-loseable waste of time encounters and then one big challenging encounter. I like combat to be about 30% of my play sessions so I make it fewer fights but fights that matter.

Part of that is that those bad guys want to win. They are CR appropriate but they will use every trick in the book to win

Gamgee
2013-09-09, 01:03 AM
Most of the time cooperative, but if a particular setting needs that brutality I will inject it into the game. Namely warhammer 40k RPG's. Though even in those I don't completely discard the cooperative element. I just switch their focus.

That game has high challenge mentality and a lower cooperative one, but that doesn't mean they both aren't there. Same with a cooperative focused game.

LawfulNifty
2013-09-09, 02:40 AM
I think the real false dichotomy in that question is the idea that a DM who isn't playing "against" the players is necessarily engaging in cooperative storytelling. In fact, I'd argue that railroad DMs are more on their players' side in a sense. As long as the players stay on the rails, at least, the DM might even help them along if the game isn't going as planned, but that's not even remotely what I'd call cooperative storytelling.

DigoDragon
2013-09-09, 07:52 AM
False dichtomy. You can have both at once, or neither. I mix elements of both.

I do both as well. Cooperative storytelling disguised as me vs. the PCs. When they actually manage to pull through at the end, they feel like they really did accomplish something.

Scow2
2013-09-09, 08:29 AM
In any game a GM should be laughed at for pulling that kind of stunt. That's my point. Because you can do something does not mean you should.
Besides, the PC's have restrictions within the rules on what they can and can not do. The DM, technically, does not. If they didn't, how could they adjudicate situations the rules don't cover or glosses over?Except, in a lot of games, you can't do it any more than the player can say he does something ridiculous and unsupported by the rules also.

When it comes to arbitrating situations the rules don't cover, he follows the rules on making rulings in those situations.

Also: Not every system is D&D.

CarpeGuitarrem
2013-09-09, 09:17 AM
False dichtomy. You can have both at once, or neither. I mix elements of both.
Quite so! You can totally work with the players and compete with them at the same time; the trick is not to let the competition override the cooperation. The Apocalypse World family of games (the most relevant here might be Dungeon World) embodies this dichotomy perfectly: the GM is RAW required to be "a fan of the players" while at the same time making life miserable for the characters.

For me, that varies per game, I suppose, but it's usually leaning towards cooperation. That doesn't mean I'm not ready to bring the hammer down when necessary, though. When I run Burning Wheel, I drop things hard on the players.

Jay R
2013-09-09, 09:32 AM
One of the problems with these discussions is that they are often derailed by people on one side misreporting what the other side is, to make it look absurd. For instance:


Nothing is stopping the DM from saying, "And you all take 1000d6 damage, because a nuke falls at your feet. No, I don't care that you are all level 1, make new characters. Let's do that again!"
They just will lose the players that way.
Hence, Rule -1: No Players, no game.

I guess technically you're right; nothing is stopping the DM from saying that. And yet, somehow, the DM isn't saying that.

The OP wrote "The other DM is very interested in destroying the party. He pits us against great monsters and we have some good fights, but at the same time he designs his monsters specifically to beat our abilities." That's the exact description of the DM behavior he's talking about, and he didn't talk about 1000d6 damage from nukes. He just didn't. So the above comment was completely off-topic.

It's as unfair as describing co-operative story-telling like this.

Nothing is stopping the DM from saying, "And your plan works, you defeat the monster, disable all the traps, find all the treasure, which can be anything you want, conquer the world, and now everything happens the way you want it to, forever. No, I don't care that you are all level 1, make new characters. Let's do that again!"

Let's not falsely characterize DMs here.

The DM's job is to run the game. Not all players want the same kind of game, and not all games are run the same way. Ideally, you find people who enjoy playing in the same kind of game.

I'm involved in creating a world in which stories can happen. This includes creating the locations, the people, the monsters, the countries - all of it. I'm creating the world, and it has lots of encounters that the 1st levels can't defeat. Mostly, I will offer them the chance to take on tasks that they have a good chance to defeat, but it's a world, not a railroad. The dragons already exist, and are already placed, and if the players choose to ignore the warnings and send their PCs there, they will face dragons.

Fortunately, my players are neither immature nor stupid, and will not make suicidal decisions. One of my jobs as DM is to give reasonable warnings (and not the kind that actually serve to pull them in).

Another of my jobs as DM is to run every non-player character in the world. When the PCs face somebody who's trying to help them, my job is to run those NPCs as if they are trying to help the PCs. When the PCs face somebody who's trying to cheat them, my job is to run those NPCs as if they are trying to cheat the PCs. And yes, when the PCs face somebody who's trying to kill them, my job is to run those NPCs as if they are trying to kill the PCs. And sometimes it might happen.

The OP talked about monsters specifically designed to nullify the PCs' advantages. I think that this is an important element of design, often underused, and often overused.

Ideally, the party should occasionally face a threat that their specific skills and powers are perfect for, and just mow them down. But sometimes, their standard tactics shouldn't work, and they need to come up with something new. Otherwise, each fight is the same old thing. It's possible that the OP's DM is overusing that, but it's also true that if you face four threats that are easily destroyed by your powers, and one threat that's immune to them, than that encounter is the one you'll remember.

That includes both co-operative story-telling (although I think it's more accurate to say "Co-operative actions within a simulated world", and "DM vs. the players" (although it's more accurate to say "some NPCs vs. the PCs"). Both are part of the complete game as I've played it since 1975, and both are part of the fun.

It's true that PC death should be very rare. But the threat of PC death should be ever-present. What the players want today is to know that they will win. But what they will want tomorrow is to have faced a challenge that they thought would kill them, and to have defeated it through a mix of heroism and cleverness.

Your mix of preferred elements could be very different. It should be the mix that you enjoy running and your players enjoy playing.

But whatever your mix is, there is no need to mis-characterize what other people do, or to act like your preferences have to be everybody else's preferences.

Rhynn
2013-09-09, 10:13 AM
Jay R writes good stuff.

To me, the key is that the GM lets the players/PCs try to find information to make informed decisions. And that is try - they won't always succeed. A good GM doesn't just spring unavoidable death-traps and unfair fight on the party for his own enjoyment.

Internal consistency and verisimilitude go a long way here. The more "real" and consistent the setting feels, the more able the players are to make informed decisions. After having fought some Black Legionnaries, the PCs can make reasonable deductions about their ability to fight some more Black Legionnaires; the next group aren't arbitrarily more deadly. They can be more deadly for a reason - maybe they're assassins masquerading as Black Legionnaires, or whatever, but that has to be something that can be followed up and that fits in.

I don't agree about the rarity of PC death, though. I think PC death should happen often enough to keep things interesting and to make, e.g., dungeons feel dangerous, so I don't take any steps to make it less common than the players' actions make it. In old D&D and OSR retroclones, there tends to be a "funnel", where few characters make it to 5th level or so, but after that they are very survivable. I enjoy this funnel (although possibly not to Dungeon Crawl Classics levels - though I would love to play or run a DCC campaign from 0 level, by the book). This is very organic, to me: the longer a character is played, in any game, the more able to survive they usually become, and the more involved they become in stories and the world. (Of course, I think all PCs' stories should end eventually, and death is a fine end, generally.)

Remmirath
2013-09-09, 09:57 PM
I would say I do neither. Cooperative storytelling seems to imply that there is very little challenge to the PCs, and that perhaps the players are coming up with the plotlines and such as much as the DM is. On the other hand, I'm not out to get the PCs (although in my very early years of DMing, I was like that), and certainly not trying to keep the players from doing anything.

Mostly I run the world. I have a major plotline and likely a lot of minor ones going, and I see what the PCs are going to do and facilitate that. I'll work with them, in as much as they go where they want and I'm not putting them on rails, and also if there are things that some players (or PCs) are particularly interested in I'll make an effort to make those things available to be encountered. If the PCs latch onto something I didn't expect them to and want to explore it, I'll write up and run that. I try to keep everything consistent and reasonable within the setting. If the PCs take it into their heads to go up against a force that they clearly don't have much of a chance against, well, they're probably not going to make it. It's their choice. The information will be there in some form, and they are fully able to go out and find it.

Games that I run tend to be quite heavy on the roleplaying, but also quite heavy on the combat, so long as the PCs have any inclination to go for it. I enjoy the roleplaying, I enjoy the combat, and so do my players.

I like lethal games. I want there to be always a chance of death for the PCs. It increases the sense of victory when there is victory, and I find that if no PCs ever die it feels cheap. If they die too infrequently it feels easy. However, the way I go about this is simply by making challenging fights and appropriately dangerous NPCs, and playing them to the proper degree of intelligence for what they are (not so much for a bear, very much for a skilled assassin). I don't design enemies specifically to nullify the strengths of the party or target their weaknesses, but sometimes they happen to do one or another of those things. In some circumstances I could see myself designing them that way specifically, such as if the PCs were being hunted down by people who knew very well what they were capable of and had time to prepare against that. I don't pull punches, and I also don't turn something that should've been walkover fight into not being one. PCs naturally tend to die off more at lower level and less at higher levels when they've been around for a while, and I think that's great. I don't actively try to make it happen more than it naturally does, though.

I do enjoy occasionally running things such as Tomb of Horrors, but I'll only do that when all the players know what they're in for and just for a bit of fun. I wouldn't put something quite that lethal and nearly sadistic into any long running game.

SowZ
2013-09-10, 12:59 AM
My favorite thing is awesome stories, but I play pretty adversarially. The best stories come from heroes overcoming adversity, failing as often as they succeed, overcoming loss, getting backed into a corner with seemingly no chance of achieving their goals, being beat down and haggard, and still winning in the end.

I find the story is benefited by me being a jerk to them, I suppose. They tend to agree and love talking about the time they barely escaped death through some clever plot even if it cost them an arm or an ancestral sword or something.

Lorsa
2013-09-10, 05:22 AM
There seem to be a discrepancy in what people consider to be "vs. the players" and we're sort of lacking a clear definition which is causing some issues I believe.

When I think of "cooperative storytelling" I think of a game where the decisions and actions I take through my character will have an impact on the events and story that unfolds through the adventures. I most definitely want that.

When I think of "vs. the players" I think of a GM who gets his/her joy out of watching the players fail. I definitely don't want that.

What I do want is a GM that gets his/her joy out of watching how I deal with tricky situations that he/she supplies me with. These situations might lead to my character dying but hopefully they will not.

When I GM myself I really enjoy when my players surprise me or create interesting situations through their actions. I typically don't think how a situation will be dealt with (when I know my players very well I have an idea), that's not my job - it's the players'. The situations that they are exposed to have varying degrees of difficulty and lethal consequences. In the end, I get my joy out of the players enjoyment of the game and will try my best to supply them with a large range of emotions; excitement, fear, love, loss, surprise, joy etc. etc. That's what most of my players like and with their help we can usually create an enjoyable game for all of us.

Rhynn
2013-09-10, 06:59 AM
There seem to be a discrepancy in what people consider to be "vs. the players" and we're sort of lacking a clear definition which is causing some issues I believe.

Yeah, that's definitely hindering discussion.


When I think of "cooperative storytelling" I think of a game where the decisions and actions I take through my character will have an impact on the events and story that unfolds through the adventures. I most definitely want that.

I have a rather more specific impression of the usual meaning. I see what you describe as just basic roleplaying without a bad GM. I see "cooperative storytelling" as a style of play where the emphasis is on the story rather than the dice, no one is really expected to die (unless the player thinks it makes good story), there's probably a lot of prep and thought going into plots, etc. "Forge-y" games like Dogs in the Vineyard and The Mist-Robed Gate are, to me, cooperative storytelling RPGs.


When I think of "vs. the players" I think of a GM who gets his/her joy out of watching the players fail. I definitely don't want that.

Yeah, that's not my understanding of what is usually meant by "vs. the players" (at least when not explicitly discussing bad GMing).

It's more like...


What I do want is a GM that gets his/her joy out of watching how I deal with tricky situations that he/she supplies me with. These situations might lead to my character dying but hopefully they will not.

Yeah, that.

I create a setting (often incorporating threads provided by the players) and a scenario (what happens without the PCs). The PCs come in and wreck both, to the great enjoyment of everyone. The PCs act, I have the setting react, the wheel keeps on turning. If there's no appropriate direct action, I just throw random wrenches at the PCs' gears - preferrably random as in not chosen by me, but rather from a random table or a game mechanic. (I love Artesia: Adventures in the Known World's death mechanics, because they organically provide ghosts to haunt the PCs.)

I definitely view myself as working against the PCs/players rather than cooperating with them: I don't work with them to craft a story, I make thing harder for their PCs and stories happen.

Lorsa
2013-09-10, 07:26 AM
Yeah, that's definitely hindering discussion.

Maybe we should try to find a common definition? It seems we've all had different experiences in the past (and not only in regards to roleplaying) that colour our views of how to interpret simple things like "co-op" and "vs".


I create a setting (often incorporating threads provided by the players) and a scenario (what happens without the PCs). The PCs come in and wreck both, to the great enjoyment of everyone. The PCs act, I have the setting react, the wheel keeps on turning. If there's no appropriate direct action, I just throw random wrenches at the PCs' gears - preferrably random as in not chosen by me, but rather from a random table or a game mechanic. (I love Artesia: Adventures in the Known World's death mechanics, because they organically provide ghosts to haunt the PCs.)

I definitely view myself as working against the PCs/players rather than cooperating with them: I don't work with them to craft a story, I make thing harder for their PCs and stories happen.

And that's why, even though we associate different meanings to the expressions (perhaps I should re-evaluate my own), I would really like to play with you. I think it would challenge me as a roleplayer. I've had surprisingly little experience as a player. My personal death-expectancy might be closer to Jay R's though, but that's neither here nor there and can certainly change in the future.

Joe the Rat
2013-09-10, 08:39 AM
Hmmph. Saw the topic, had a reply, and then saw Jay R already covered the bases. But I'm a chatty little knocker, so here goes:

Yeah, you have a couple of different elements here related to game flow. Co-op is sort of the middle between Set Piece (DM-mandated world) and Improv Universe (entirely made of suggestions from the audience - i.e. the players).

The 'versus players' element is a challenge style of play. You are presenting a situation and making the players work to a solution. This could be social, this could be puzzle and mystery, this could be some sort of weird 5-on-1 megachess wargame (protip: Always give your pope the jet pack). This comes in passive (solve my riddle! survive my deathtrap!) and active (defeat my army!) flavors. This can be a generic, possibly 'numerically rated' challenge, or tailored to the weaknesses of the party (like any good supervillain would). Sometimes it can be an intelligence test (Can your party survive this? No? Why are you still here, then?). This can make for memorable games (Look up 'The Big One' campaign for some epic challenge-type battles).

I keep using that word 'challenge.' That's because when the GM is against the players, it should be about 'challenging' them, not 'beating' them or 'screwing with' them. And for Gary's sake, don't cheat. Don't change the rules because they are 'winning' and suddenly make your uber-GMNPC (possibly villain) suddenly immune to acid because you forgot the techno-alchemist can whip up a Vitriolic Effluvia Projection Apparatus.

Yora
2013-09-10, 09:40 AM
I think in an ideal game, there is no predetermined plot, but only a team of protagonists, played by the players, and one or more teams of antagonists, played by the GM.
During the game session, the players decide what they are doing to stop the antagonist plans, and when the GM prepares for the next session, he decides how the antagonist react and change their plans in response to the trouble the PCs causes them.

Broken Twin
2013-09-10, 12:06 PM
I definitely prefer a cooperative game with lethal combat. If I want to play a game where I just run around trying to kill stuff, I'll play one of the many video games I own that appeal to that. I play pen and paper games to make characters and explore stories with other people.

I do have to agree that there's a bit of a false dichotomy though. Nothing stops a GM from running a solid in depth story alongside brutal stacked against the players combat. There is a bit of truth to it though, because the question is essentially related to roleplay vs rollplay. The options give are two very real extremes, but most games (to my knowledge) operate somewhere in the grey between the two.

Rhynn
2013-09-10, 12:28 PM
I think in an ideal game, there is no predetermined plot, but only a team of protagonists, played by the players, and one or more teams of antagonists, played by the GM.
During the game session, the players decide what they are doing to stop the antagonist plans, and when the GM prepares for the next session, he decides how the antagonist react and change their plans in response to the trouble the PCs causes them.

That's sort of how I run things, but not exactly.

For one, I mostly let the PCs pick their antagonists. The setting has various amounts of evil wizards & witches, scheming viziers, power-hungry barons, robber knights, orc tribes, giant chieftains, and terrifying dragons, but the PCs are only going to run into some of them, which then get developed and fleshed out during play (and particularly between sessions).

Generally, the content for my games consists of two things: people and locations I pre-planned and the PCs go to, and events that happen because the PCs did something.

In my Artesia campaign, probably half of the content as been the PCs acting on something, and the other half has been reactions. For instance, one PC had to deal with a furious jilted knight several sessions after sleeping with his wife, and the PCs all together had to deal with an Inquisition because they had not been too shy about using their magic in a way that people noticed, so had essentially caused a stark rise in "witchcraft" in the region.

I try to make sure that, no matter what the PCs do, there are logical but surprising consequences. They don't always think of the potential consequences beforehand, but they usually pick up on them before they materialize on their doorstep.

I think the big difference I see in "cooperative storytelling" is the nature of the stories. I'm not trying to create plots and stories with purpose or pre-planning. I'm trying to create stories that surprise everyone around the table in equal amount (which is why I love random tables). They're not necessarily stories about people or ideals or anything like that, but of events and places.

CarpeGuitarrem
2013-09-10, 01:41 PM
I have a rather more specific impression of the usual meaning. I see what you describe as just basic roleplaying without a bad GM. I see "cooperative storytelling" as a style of play where the emphasis is on the story rather than the dice, no one is really expected to die (unless the player thinks it makes good story), there's probably a lot of prep and thought going into plots, etc. "Forge-y" games like Dogs in the Vineyard and The Mist-Robed Gate are, to me, cooperative storytelling RPGs.
You and I have very different views of Dogs, it would seem. :smallwink:

There's actually a lot of adversarial content between the GM and the players, because they're supposed to push the players to the point where they have to decide what's worth "crossing the line" for and what isn't. That's the grist which makes Dogs run, and it's actually a pretty good example of the strengths that adversarial mechanics can bring to the game. And death can happen any time that the GM puts it up as the stakes of a conflict...or any time that a character takes too much of a beating (usually because they got shot).

It's not much use to generalize "Forge" games, because they are, by nature, odd ducks. :smallsmile: And a lot of them push the envelopes of adversity in new ways. Plus, indie games have evolved since then. Case in point--Mythender is an explicitly competitive game that's tuned so that the GM can "play" it fairly.

BRC
2013-09-10, 02:03 PM
The thing is that a GM is constrained by very few hard and fast rules. A Gm could send a level 1 party up against a CR40 encounter without violating a single rule.

in a truely competative scenario, each competitor does everything within their power to triumph over the other without violating any rules. A true "DM vs Player" Scenario would mean the players building the most powerful, most theoretically optimized characters they could within the limits the GM sets, and the GM opening with "A meteor strikes where you are standing. You take 10000000000d6 damage".

So I would argue that, speaking in the most absolute terms, you could not have Cooperative storytelling alongside a GM vs Players scenario, because in a true GM vs Players scenario, the GM "Wins" before any story can be built.


Obviously, in a practical sense, the GM is following certain rules that they need not neccessarily follow. They are limiting themselves to CR appropriate encounters, providing proper treasure and XP rewards, giving the PC's time to rest between battles, only attacking them with actual encounters that they can fight against (rather than "Rocks fall").

With those constraints the two are not neccessarily mutally exclusive, but it does seem unlikely, because the two perspectives come from very different mindsets.

Remember, we're not talking about how successful the GM is at their goal. A GM who views the game as a competition between them and the players can, despite their best efforts, only design trivial encounters for the party. A GM who is trying to tell a story with the players can, intentionally or not, build encounters that push the PC's to the absolute limits of what they can handle.

In order to be running both simultenously, the DM's mindset would need to be somthing along the lines of "I hope that my players build a great story...that ends with their defeat at the hands of one of my deviously crafted encounters".

The real crux of the issue is that a Competative DM isn't trying to make an encounter that CHALLENGES the party, they're trying to make one that DEFEATS the party. A Competative DM wants the party to fail.

A cooperative DM may want to challenge the party in order to make them feel more accomplished, but in the end they want the PC's to triumph. If the party fails then no more story can be told, so they want to bring the PC's as close as possible to defeat, only for them to win anyway.

A cooperative DM can run a difficult game, but their goal is not for the PC's to lose.

Really, the only way A DM can be both a competitor AND a cooperative storyteller is if they want to build a story that involves the PC's losing. It might be a Rogue's Legacy type situation, where everytime there is a TPK, the players build the next generation of heroes to resume the previous PC's quest. That way the DM could "Win" without ending the story.


Otherwise there may be situations where the PC's are defeated but the story dosn't end. The PC's may be captured, or stranded in the wilderness, or forced to flee (This relies on your players being willing to/thinking of running away). However, those are situational, so unless you are building each encounter with the hope that it ends with the PC's defeated, but alive, then you are not both Cooperative and Competative.

Yora
2013-09-10, 02:56 PM
I think the key to playing the NPCs competetive against the PCs is to create a clear list of troops and resources that the antagonists have to work with. Which should be something the PCs could handle.
Then the GM should just limit himself to play the antagonists with only those resources.

But as always, if it makes the game more fun for the players, adding some additional troops is always an option. But not to ignore the previous limitations to keep "winning" against the players. Only to keep things fun and exciting for the players, when the PCs are having too easy a time.

CarpeGuitarrem
2013-09-10, 03:47 PM
The thing is that a GM is constrained by very few hard and fast rules. A Gm could send a level 1 party up against a CR40 encounter without violating a single rule.
In D&D 3.5. :smallsmile:

Other games don't necessarily work like that. Plus, playing competitively doesn't necessarily mean that you stack the deck against the players; there's such a thing as a sportsmanlike GM who gives the players reasonable odds and then plays competitively against them.

BRC
2013-09-10, 03:58 PM
Plus, playing competitively doesn't necessarily mean that you stack the deck against the players; there's such a thing as a sportsmanlike GM who gives the players reasonable odds and then plays competitively against them.

I acknowledged that actually. In practical terms a competative DM will set limitations for themselves that are not neccessarily dictated by RAW.
My point was that, whatever limitations are set upon them, a competative DM's goal is to make the PC's fail. They "Win" when the players lose.

CarpeGuitarrem
2013-09-10, 04:26 PM
I acknowledged that actually. In practical terms a competative DM will set limitations for themselves that are not neccessarily dictated by RAW.
My point was that, whatever limitations are set upon them, a competative DM's goal is to make the PC's fail. They "Win" when the players lose.
I'd say that's the extreme of competition, not the essence of competition. You could even be competitive and cooperative with the following attitude:

"If they find a way to beat me, it's gonna be absolutely awesome. So I'm going to make them sweat like never before."

Being competitive doesn't always mean that you feel you have to win. It means that you're going to try to win, and that you're going to put a fight up. You can be competitive, aggressive, even, without adopting a "win at any cost" attitude.

(Mind you, if you are competitive, you have to be ready to provide a satisfying conclusion in the event of a defeat. But that shouldn't be too hard; I've noted in the past that it's a thin line which separates some Shakesperean tragedies from the comedies. All it takes is some elements gone wrong.)

BRC
2013-09-10, 04:47 PM
I'd say that's the extreme of competition, not the essence of competition. You could even be competitive and cooperative with the following attitude:

"If they find a way to beat me, it's gonna be absolutely awesome. So I'm going to make them sweat like never before."

Being competitive doesn't always mean that you feel you have to win. It means that you're going to try to win, and that you're going to put a fight up. You can be competitive, aggressive, even, without adopting a "win at any cost" attitude.

(Mind you, if you are competitive, you have to be ready to provide a satisfying conclusion in the event of a defeat. But that shouldn't be too hard; I've noted in the past that it's a thin line which separates some Shakesperean tragedies from the comedies. All it takes is some elements gone wrong.)

I never said "Win at any costs", or "feel you have to win", I said "want to win" and more importantly "Trying to win".

Being a Competative GM means setting limitations on yourself, then once those are in place doing your best to win. It's about your goal, not your methods. a Cooperative GM and a Competative GM could make exactly the same adventures.


"If they find a way to beat me, it's gonna be absolutely awesome. So I'm going to make them sweat like never before."
This quote tells us nothing about whether the GM is cooperative or competative.
A Competative GM would be thinking

"Here is how I plan to beat them. If they find a way to beat me, it's gonna be absolutely awesome. But I'm going to make them sweat like never before."
A Cooperative GM would be thinking.

"Here is the encounter they're going to fight. If they find a way to beat it, it's gonna be absolutely awesome, but I want them to earn it, so I'm going to make them sweat like never before."

Being a Competative GM dosn't mean making difficult encounters. It means making the most difficult encounter you can within the limitations set by both the rules and yourself. If you think of a way that you COULD make the encounter more difficult without violating one of those limitations and don't use it, then you are either 1) Adding another Limitation, or 2) Not trying to win. And if you're not trying to win, then you're not being competetive.

The reason I'm saying it's difficult to be both Cooperative and Competetive is because the Competetive GM wants the PC's to lose, and the Cooperative one wants to tell a great story. Since it's hard to tell a great story where the Heroes keep losing, these two goals are at cross-purposes. They're not neccessarily mutually exclusive, but they're difficult to reconcile.


The only real way to identify a competetive GM is that, when initative is rolled, they are thinking " I hope the PCs lose". You could be sending a 15th level party against a housefly, but you're intent is for that housefly to win.


In the same way a cooperative GM could send a 1st level party against an adult dragon, not because they neccessarily want the PC's to be roasted, but because they think that encounter will lead to a great story.

A cooperative GM dosn't neccessarily care if the PC's win or lose, they care what makes a better story, and usually that means the PC's winning.

navar100
2013-09-10, 05:47 PM
When the DM boasts how many PCs he has killed, he needs to be removed from the chair.

Lateral
2013-09-10, 05:53 PM
Honestly, I'd say it depends on the kind of campaign you're running. I mean, if it's primarily a dungeon crawl, then yeah, it kind of is DM vs. players- you may or may not actually be trying to kill them, depending on the kind of dungeon crawl and how easily one could introduce new PCs in place of dead ones, but you're certainly trying to challenge them. Hell, I'm DMing a dungeon crawl right now, and if I didn't tailor the encounters to the characters at least a little bit, with the damage my PCs are packing, the monsters would all die on the first round.

At the same time, in a really plot-heavy campaign, the point would really be more to tell a cooperative story. As such, the DM doesn't necessarily have to be trying to kill the players, although it depends on the campaign- it might be more like that if the plot includes a bounty on the PCs or something, but you're still trying to tell a story with it.

Jay R
2013-09-11, 01:09 AM
The thing is that a GM is constrained by very few hard and fast rules. A Gm could send a level 1 party up against a CR40 encounter without violating a single rule.

in a truely competative scenario, each competitor does everything within their power to triumph over the other without violating any rules. A true "DM vs Player" Scenario would mean the players building the most powerful, most theoretically optimized characters they could within the limits the GM sets, and the GM opening with "A meteor strikes where you are standing. You take 10000000000d6 damage".

So I would argue that, speaking in the most absolute terms, you could not have Cooperative storytelling alongside a GM vs Players scenario, because in a true GM vs Players scenario, the GM "Wins" before any story can be built.

But real DMs don't do that. The OP specifically defined" DM vs. the players" for purposes of this thread as:

He pits us against great monsters and we have some good fights, but at the same time he designs his monsters specifically to beat our abilities. I'm an illusionist and he pits us against monsters with tremorsense almost every game, for example.

Therefore all you have demonstrated is that your definition of "DM vs. the players" is not consistent with the question we've been asked.


When the DM boasts how many PCs he has killed, he needs to be removed from the chair.

Not at all. When the players stop having fun, the DM needs to be removed from the game. Any other reason for removing the DM has, at its root, the assumption that all players have to agree with you about D&D.

Poison_Fish
2013-09-11, 01:23 AM
I tend towards a cooperative environment, but one of the first things I ask my players is how harsh they want me to be to them. Different groups want different things, and players individually in those groups can want different things. So I got most of that negotiation out of the way in the beginning. Prioritizing my players and my own happiness is one of my foremost goals. Just that it fits into a context that also engages some problem solving (challenge), rp (interaction) and everything else that would fit into a game.

Rhynn
2013-09-11, 04:57 AM
Not at all. When the players stop having fun, the DM needs to be removed from the game. Any other reason for removing the DM has, at its root, the assumption that all players have to agree with you about D&D.

Deffo. If the GM brags about his kill count and the players, on the whole, rave about his campaigns, there's obviously no problem. Aggressive memetic generalizations aren't that useful in assessing the worthiness of a GM.

SowZ
2013-09-11, 11:51 AM
Deffo. If the GM brags about his kill count and the players, on the whole, rave about his campaigns, there's obviously no problem. Aggressive memetic generalizations aren't that useful in assessing the worthiness of a GM.

If they show interest in my games, I always warn and tell people that I have a PC permanently die about every third session. Far more if you count deaths that the players come back from. And yet I have to turn people down to play all the time or else I'd have tables with 10 or 11 players in it. (Which I dislike. Five players is my favorite.) People always want to join because my players talk about the stories and the most recent dramas and the action scenes.

Even though I fairly regularly throw grossly overpowered things at them and allow the consequences of the PCs actions be serious sacrifice, (a limb or something,) and won't fudge the dice or the NPCs plans to save a PC. My goal, though, is to craft intense, character driven stories where I throw something at them and they come up with the answer. And the WAY they solve the problem or kill the enemy typically creates a chain reaction leading to the next big conflict.

I'm not a killer DM by some standards, but I am by the standards of most people I know who play D&D or tabletop games. Now, I'm not proud or ashamed of that. I'm proud when I overhear my players talking to their friends about the game because I know they are excited about it. The risk of death adds to that for most of them.

CarpeGuitarrem
2013-09-11, 12:10 PM
Even though I fairly regularly throw grossly overpowered things at them and allow the consequences of the PCs actions be serious sacrifice, (a limb or something,) and won't fudge the dice or the NPCs plans to save a PC. My goal, though, is to craft intense, character driven stories where I throw something at them and they come up with the answer. And the WAY they solve the problem or kill the enemy typically creates a chain reaction leading to the next big conflict.
I would point to this, I think, as a great example of how cooperation and competition can synergize well.

I'll try and explain how I see that working, but my explanation hinges heavily on prior knowledge of ballroom dance, but I will do my best to explicate.

In ballroom dance, especially something like the tango, maintaining tension between the partners is of prime importance. The basic position is predicated on both partners pushing at one another and pulling one another together; it's really a very interesting dichotomy. It's a controlled tension, and that tension is what gets channeled into the energy of the dance.

It's pressure that generates the momentum of the dance, and similarly--competitive pressure from the GM can be fostered from a competitive attitude, in a way that the two are not mutually exclusive in the slightest. It's not even terribly difficult. The GM just has to have a scope of fun beyond showcasing their own abilities and creations.

BRC
2013-09-11, 12:36 PM
But real DMs don't do that. The OP specifically defined" DM vs. the players" for purposes of this thread as:


Therefore all you have demonstrated is that your definition of "DM vs. the players" is not consistent with the question we've been asked.


Which is why I went on to say.

Obviously, in a practical sense, the GM is following certain rules that they need not neccessarily follow. They are limiting themselves to CR appropriate encounters, providing proper treasure and XP rewards, giving the PC's time to rest between battles, only attacking them with actual encounters that they can fight against (rather than "Rocks fall").

With those constraints the two are not neccessarily mutally exclusive, but it does seem unlikely, because the two perspectives come from very different mindsets.

Saying that just because in an absolute sense a Competetive GM would open each session by instantly squashing the players, that does not mean that a GM MUST do that to be considered competetive, or that any Competetive GM's DO act that way. It's saying that an instant-TPK is the ABSOLUTE expression of being a competetive GM.

Then I said

Remember, we're not talking about how successful the GM is at their goal. A GM who views the game as a competition between them and the players can, despite their best efforts, only design trivial encounters for the party. A GM who is trying to tell a story with the players can, intentionally or not, build encounters that push the PC's to the absolute limits of what they can handle.

Stating that encounter difficulty is not neccessarily an indication of whether or not the GM is competetive. A Competetive GM could make tediously easy encounters, either through incompetence, or through too many self-imposed limitations.

Competative or not, a GM should try to challenge their players. Different GMs have different ideas on what constitutes a proper challenge.

The difference is that a Competative GM wants their players to fail. We don't know if the OP's GM is specifically designing those encounters with the hopes that the PC's will fail. It sounds like they havn't TPK'd yet, so the GM could just be very good at pushing them exactly to their limit.

SowZ
2013-09-11, 12:39 PM
Which is why I went on to say.

Saying that just because in an absolute sense a Competetive GM would open each session by instantly squashing the players, that does not mean that a GM MUST do that to be considered competetive, or that any Competetive GM's DO act that way. It's saying that an instant-TPK is the ABSOLUTE expression of being a competetive GM.

Then I said


Stating that encounter difficulty is not neccessarily an indication of whether or not the GM is competetive. A Competetive GM could make tediously easy encounters, either through incompetence, or through too many self-imposed limitations.

Competative or not, a GM should try to challenge their players. Different GMs have different ideas on what constitutes a proper challenge.

The difference is that a Competative GM wants their players to fail. We don't know if the OP's GM is specifically designing those encounters with the hopes that the PC's will fail. It sounds like they havn't TPK'd yet, so the GM could just be very good at pushing them exactly to their limit.

Yeah, if you are good at knowing the characters/rules, you can ballpark pretty well. I've thrown CR+10 encounters at the party before and figured they could just barely win/survive. And they've won or survived through means I didn't predict, but they did it.

CarpeGuitarrem
2013-09-11, 01:36 PM
The difference is that a Competative GM wants their players to fail. We don't know if the OP's GM is specifically designing those encounters with the hopes that the PC's will fail. It sounds like they havn't TPK'd yet, so the GM could just be very good at pushing them exactly to their limit.
If you're pushing characters exactly to their limit, I somehow don't think you really want them to lose. :smallwink:

BRC
2013-09-11, 01:51 PM
If you're pushing characters exactly to their limit, I somehow don't think you really want them to lose. :smallwink:

Exactly my point. We don't know if the GM is trying to beat the PC's and barely failing, or trying to challenge them as much as possible without defeating them and succeeding.
Encounter Difficulty alone does not tell us if the GM is Competetive.

Emmerask
2013-09-11, 05:21 PM
Dm vs players really only works in games that have very strict rules for what the dm is allowed to do, ie something akin to HeroQuest or Descent: Journeys in the Dark.

Anything with more open rules for the dm will always result in the dm winning if you truly play vs the players.
So overall somewhere in the middle for me :smallwink:

Jay R
2013-09-11, 10:16 PM
The idea of a DM who instantly kills the players is irrelevant to the topic, which is what real DMs actually do.

If any of the real DMs we're talking about (especially the one that the OP actually asked about) are really competing with the players, then they are appallingly bad at it. The survival rate is ridiculously high.