Originally Posted by
icefractal
Some of your players behavior made me wonder - do they read Knights of the Dinner Table by any chance?
Because I read that before I got into actually playing, and it did give me a screwed up view of the GM/player relationship for a while. No hate to the comic, it's clearly for entertainment and not pretending to be a documentary or manual. But it presented this particular play-style that past-me thought was close to reality, when in fact I've never seen it in the wild and it'd probably be a bad idea for most groups.
That play style is:
* Antagonistic GM/player relationship - GMs are encouraged (by other GMs) to run a deadly game, kill plenty of PCs, trick the party into TPKs, find ways to take away levels and magic items, etc. Meanwhile players are encouraged to do anything and everything within the rules to win - making the GM throw away prep is a "high five" moment.
* But, everyone scrupulously follows the rules, and the GMs have an strict sense of what's "fair play". Constructing a situation where the party has little chance to avoid a TPK - that's fine and laudable. But fudging the HP of a monster? No GM worth their salt would ever do that.
* The rules are much more powerful and enforced than they have been for any TTRPG in history. Like the RPGA on steroids, but for every game including home ones. This includes fully embracing the "PCs can be brought from one game to another" idea, to the extent that if one GM lets the PCs get an overpowered magic item, other GMs will get mad at them and brainstorm ways to have it stolen, rather than just ... not allow a PC to enter their game with it.
And this leads to entertaining antics in a piece of single-author fiction. But shouldn't be used as a guide for how to play.
Although you could potentially do it as a "two layer" RPG, where you're roleplaying as players/GM in a setting where RPGs are more antagonistic, competitive, and universally important, and then those characters are themselves roleplaying as characters in a TTRPG. Kind of like the Yu-gi-oh cartoons, I guess.