The second session..., .. in which things get worse Options

[Crazy Ivan]

Crazy Ivan may have just created a list of the GM Archetype Templates. May need to start a new thread to sketch them all out! LOL

Thanks. Though admittedly, those GM's covered were across several different games (D&D, Shadowrun, and World of Darkness), I'm sure there are several other "archetypes" we could do. Though I think it would be better just to rate a GM by how focused he is on various factors (Rules, Combat, NPC depiction, Immersion, working with Players, etc. etc.)

[HunterHerne]

Thanks. Though admittedly, those GM's covered were across several different games (D&D, Shadowrun, and World of Darkness), I'm sure there are several other "archetypes" we could do. Though I think it would be better just to rate a GM by how focused he is on various factors (Rules, Combat, NPC depiction, Immersion, working with Players, etc. etc.)

Gotta agree with you there. I'm personally not sure where I fall as a GM, except that I know I prefer to not treat the PC`s as "Special Snowflakes", even in D&D. This didn't mesh well with one group (they like being overpowered compared to Non-boss NPC's, and effectively ruling the cosmos, eventually), but they put up with it mostly because I had the best storyline going in any game they'd played, at least in the recent years before that. So I guess I had some good points, and some bad, but so does every GM, and that makes a dynamic scale better then a static description of archtypes.

[Mayhem_2006]

My principal for GM and players is simple. Everybody is there to be entertained.

Every person at the table should work not to entertain themselves, but to entertain the other 4 (5, 6 ...99) people at the table.

If all 5 of the people at the table do this, everybody gets out 4 times as much entertainment as they put in.

So, whilst I stick to the rules pretty heavily, as GM I might look at a very close dice roll, for example, and decide, based on my current players, "would it be more entertaining for the other players if this test were passed or failed?".

[Dr.Rockso]

Yes, I was asking for advice; and yes, I liked a lot of the ideas I got. The problem is I'd find many of them really hard to run. I mean, that bit about "have the players wake up in a Lone Star cruiser" in OTR just reads like a total wash to me - how is a novice GM going to run that? There seems to be very little on Lone Star in any of the books at this point.

Sometimes half the fun of Shadowrun is that you don't have to run it: the players might end up doing it for you:

"Oh shit, we're busted. I'll fake a heart attack, you bust some heads when they come to check on me."
Sometimes you're just along for the ride and have to make the resulting mayhem challenging but fun.

Also, you're the gm. You're the great story god. You can opt to make escape trivial:

Say after being booked and on their way to the local maximum security, the prisoner transport gets high-jacked. Turns out the mob was busting out someone in the same transport, and now the team owes some favors.

Or

Turns out the arresting officer is more than a little corrupt. Him and his partner decide to let the team go. The catch? There's a dangerous job that needs doing, and the runners are now desperate enough to do it.

Or

They are driving by the outskirts of glow city on their way to the police HQ when a toxic horned bear runs out and decides it wants to snack on a squad car. After tearing open the car roof and while the bear is chewing on the arresting officers, the team escapes in the confusion. Or takes on the bear., if they're feeling ballsy. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/silly.gif)

See? Your options are endless. Hell, you could have a couple sessions of them breaking out of prison, even. That would be exciting.

[Kliko]

My principal for GM and players is simple. Everybody is there to be entertained.

Every person at the table should work not to entertain themselves, but to entertain the other 4 (5, 6 ...99) people at the table.

If all 5 of the people at the table do this, everybody gets out 4 times as much entertainment as they put in.

So, whilst I stick to the rules pretty heavily, as GM I might look at a very close dice roll, for example, and decide, based on my current players, "would it be more entertaining for the other players if this test were passed or failed?".

QFT!