Player vs GM

This always gets people heated , so let's get it straight. Wouldn't you say that "Player vs GM" is the nature of the game? Unless you're playing some collaborative storytelling game, it's the GMs job to provide resistance to the player. Obviously I'm not advocating for rocks fall for no reason, but sometimes you just need to kill a character or some other unsavory act.

...No? That's a single pretty narrow playstyle that isn't widely played these days.

Most RPG's are a collaborative experience. The GM can challenge the players without actively opposing them, because overcoming interesting challenges is part of what makes a good story. You should never 'need' to kill a player character, if a character dies it should happen for narrative or world based reasons, depending on the tone of your game and your style as GM.

>provide resistance
Some gm feel like thry need to punish players. Like prove how smart they are for throwing some super powerful monster at the group. Some player feel like anything bad that happens is the dm is out to get them on a personal level. What you arr saying it true but not the dm vs pc mentality that you think it is.

The dm need to make the game challanging but fun and thr player needs to realize this.

Bait thread, I feel, but I'll bite it, anyhow.

Way I've seen it an' done it, the DM an' players run around, doin' what they feel like, together. I mean, sure, there's some stuff fixed and whatnot, but it's better to see what th' players do, and go off on that.

No.
The GM's job is to provide fun and engaging scenarios of struggle for the characters to overcome.
He should not be actively seeking to halt the character from advancing the scenario or getting something out of it.
That mentality fucked up my last try at a campaign because playerthought it was in my best interest to prevent them from ever getting any information on the plot or anything done at all.
This kind of GMing may work for certain kind of campaigns, but I certainly would not recommend it as a way of understanding TTRPGs at all.

No, you're misunderstanding the role of the DM. I'm not opposed to the players. I'm just responsible for providing suitable challenges and ensuring that the world reacts appropriately to their actions. I'm more neutral arbiter, then enemy force.

I don't consider myself opposed to the GM. The GM can place hindrances and opponents before the players, and then players can oppose those, or ultimately succumb should they fail. But whatever grisly doom may befall the PCs, the players and GM should be working together to have fun and entertain one another.

>Unless you're playing some collaborative storytelling game
Like a roleplaying game, yes

>it's the GMs job to provide resistance to the player
No. It's the GM's job to provide resistance to the characters, in addition to the other stuff a GM is responsible for.

The conflict is between PCs and NPCs not players and GM.

No, the GM has to collaborate with the PCs to make a fun experience. And fun comes from overcoming challenges.

DnD will never be Player vs GM because the GM literally has the powers of a god. He by definition cannot lose.

Providing resistance is different from being "against" the players. The GM can always arrange for the players to fail, by simply either placing objectives out of reach or putting in obstacles that they have no chance of overcoming. The reason the obstacles are there, and that they're ideally ones that the players can overcome with some difficulty, is as much for the players' benefits as it is for the GM. He is not antagonistic in that sense.

Sometimes I wonder if threads like these are made by people who don't lurk or people who are just fishing for replies,

>wonder
Really nigga

>Unless you're playing some collaborative storytelling game,
Such as all role-playing games? I think you're confusing them with board games.

It's a gameshow, Players vs. series of challenges. The DM is the host and MC.

it takes just as much effort to type an apostrophe as the letter it's replacing, what the fuck are you doing user
why do you type with an accent

>not saving urself a single keystroke to sound like a jackass

read the first thing I said again, he't not even saving keystrokes

Well, No, because the GM should not be trying to "win". Even notable slaughterhouse dungeons are not fun for a GM to kill a party on.

>Wouldn't you say that "Player vs GM" is the nature of the game?
In as much as a coach is vs his players, or a punching bag is against the person hitting it.

There's a difference between "challenging players" and "vs players". Unsavoury acts may be done, but it's generally done in a manner that will increase enjoyment in the game, not to "win".

In a vs scenario, one side wins, and another loses. But there's no way for a GM to win on his own; a TPK isn't a win for the GM.
All the GM can do is win WITH his players.

He's not saving as in using less, he's saving as in preserving one keystroke in which to be an ass hole with.

Hee wrraights liwk hee tolks.
Zounds rite too mee.

...

If it ever goes to Player vs GM then the game is over. GM wins by default but the game looses all fun.

T'ell wif' it, I do as I please. No, but I just enter a state of being sometimes, in which I speak as I talk. It's quite terrible.

>I speak as I talk

>but sometimes you just need to kill a character or some other unsavory act.
Can't wait to hear the reasoning behind that.

Like, if your players are playing smartly and are avoiding taking unneccessary deadly risks and playing safe, without this actually hampering them or slowing them down considerabily... then why would you kill a character?

You don't mean railroading them into a situation that is bad for them, right? Right? I don't want to lose more faith in humanity right now, please tell me you didn't mean it like that.

>if a character dies it should happen for narrative or world based reasons
lmao

leave 'im alone, user, 'e's clearly havin' a tough time

I don't know is "man vs god" the nature of life ?

I guess if they are having fun crawling on vents for hours that's fine but often players will just get bored of not taking risks, but not be retarded enough to actually go and take a risk. No one likes non-optimal play, even if it's subconsciously.

You could say that, (if) there is a god that wants you to improve, he would put obstacles in your way for you to overcome. But sometimes your death IS the obstacle for other people around you.

you are exactly the type of person that doesn't get invited back to my sessions. Usually I'll kill your character with something whimsical as a send off, so you're remembered as that one guy who drowned in horse manure or got crushed by a miniature grand piano.

That there is a nazi gun

>I guess if they are having fun crawling on vents for hours that's fine but often players will just get bored of not taking risks, but not be retarded enough to actually go and take a risk. No one likes non-optimal play, even if it's subconsciously.

You haven't played with my group yet: they don't care wether it's optimal or not. They only care about looking cool- which is why our group ends up in so much shit in the first place.

I'm very unsure how you'd manage to get me to attend one of your sessions in the first place. Your kind of GM is very obvious and easy to avoid.

The GM has complete control over the game world, so if they really wanted to "win" they could just say 'rocks fall, everybody dies' and leave. This doesn't happen (usually) because the point of D&D is to have fun.

That would be the kind of group that just doesn't need a danger nudge from the DM (a real blessing of a group also)

I might have put myself badly but obviously the GM isn't trying to win. What I'm saying is that without adversity there is just no challenge, and without that there's no fun. I wasn't thinking much of DnD since that's such a low lethal game in the first place and there's not even really permanent injuries and such.

If you're playing the game tactically, it's really "scenario designer vs. players". That's a bit complicated by the fact that most DMs are running scenarios that they've written themselves. The powers of each side are different but equal; the designer can put in whatever they want, but the players can (in a remotely fair scenario) decide that their characters can't deal with the challenge yet, and go off to acquire resources elsewhere.

In principle, the DM puts on a referee hat at the start of each session and fairly interprets the interaction between the player characters and the scenario. In reality, most DMs find themselves taking the side of their friends - or more rarely, their creation.

Not him but you seem to be a very shit GM

My perspective as a GM has always been that The Players want to defeat the GM, and the GM wants The Players to defeat the GM.
As a GM I /could/ easily just kill the party and I /could/ make encounters or puzzles that are so simple to as be trivial. The GM wants the players to be bad-asses, or geniuses, or masters of stealth, or a bunch of idiots who stumble through. Regardless of how they overcome challenges it needs to make the party feel like they're cool and interesting.

>my sessions

Haha, right. As if.

Gm vs pcs is dumb. There isn't an even playing field, the gm is practically god and can easily win. They don't even have to say "I win" they can totally win while pretending to play by "the rules" even if they write those rules themselves.

It's also dumb as shit. If you just antagonize and try to beat the players then they won't get to experience your world, and at that point why are you even gming? Some kind of twisted power fantasy?

I typically think of it as "everyone vs boredom"

>Unless you're playing some collaborative storytelling game
That is the definition of an RPG, yes.

I would say yes but the players are given a large advantage. It would be simple to kill players. It would also be simple to just throw chumps at players. When I DM I play against the players with them having the advantage better equipped, better informed, and often better tactics.

It's the GM's job to provide a universe and story structure for the players, and occasionally to provide the players with consequences when they do really dumb shit. "I roll to attack the King", and other stuff like that.

I do not believe it's the GM/QM/whatever's job to actively and constantly try to kill the players. At the end of the day it would be really fucking easy to just murder the players out of hand. A while back I ran a space combat game and for their tutorial fight I matched the players against a comparable enemy because I wanted to give them a taste of combat. If I did what you suggest I'd just say "Yeah welcome to combat, the enemy left behind a battleship and it's entire escort fleet, enjoy!"

I like this definition. as a GM you want your players to succeed but you want it to be interesting and an entertaining challenge.

People regularly mistake what "Player vs DM" means; The DM provides forces (NPCs, monsters, traps, etc) that are in opposition to the PCs. Players have to use their smarts and experience, filtered through their characters, to overcome the obstacles put in their way. The DM has to avoid misusing their awesome powers to just automatically deny, counteract, or gainsay the players' stated/intended actions. NPCs and monsters do not have access to the full knowledge of the DM about the PCs, their magic items, their spells, their classes, abilities, skills, etc, unless they have actually been able to spy or scry for it.

>"I roll to attack the King"
Oh Christ I hate that shit. Another one is when you try to give out a quest, and they say "Well, what's in it for me?"

Fucker, you came to play, so stop pulling my dick.

No, but God has been running "The Temptations of the Devil" for millennia now. I heard one of the modules he ran before that was "Exodus", but his players didn't understand what to do and just wandered around the fucking desert forever.

One of the others I know he ran was "The Great Flood", but his players ignored all the plot hooks. DMPC survived. TPK'd the entire party for being dicks. Vowed never to run that module again.

>Wouldn't you say that "Player vs GM" is the nature of the game?
No, pretty much only That Guys think so.

>Some player feel like anything bad that happens is the dm is out to get them on a personal level.
Holy shit this, last D&D game I ran I couldn't have anything bad happen to this player else he would bitch and moan. What annoyed me the most was how two of the other players present tried to help him out of the effects and shit and he would still bitch and moan about losing his turn and shit (out of all the shit that effected him he lost MAYBE a single turn and that triggered him massively) he then rage quitted over a bad roll and the others covinced him to come back to the table
What did the other players tell me? "You know how he is, so dont target him" yeah fun,Worst part is that I won't be gming in a while so I cannot try to GM for a decent party