Ugh. I hate that mentality so very hard.

It's not "your" game. You have the responsibility of coming up with story seeds, judging rule disputes, and playing the sundry characters the players come across, but that doesn't make it "your" game whatsoever. It's a game of shared storytelling. You decided to take that particular responsibility, but that doesn't give you the right to be a dictator or treat everything as "yours." Even if you're setting the tone, deciding on house rules and doing the brunt of the work. If all of the players are upset or disagree heavily about something, they have every right to ask you to change it to make it a better experience for everyone at the table... and they have every right to expect you to do so.

And so help me if I ever meet a GM who asks me for my character sheet then burns it in front of me (I've seen people recommend doing that many times on this forum in the past). I'd likely be getting arrested for assault soon thereafter.

Did you read my full post? I don't think you did

let me show you what else I said.

Yes, I read your post. I was taking specific issue with your use of the phrase "your game," the overemphasis of "your" altogether, and the mentality that you get to dictate anything and everything that goes on.

How very selfish of you. You're telling us that the game doesn't belong to the GM, it belongs to YOU. That's why you can play whatever character you want, and the GM isn't allowed to forbid it. Please You pay lip service to the idea that the game belongs to everyone, but you're really just asserting that your right to powergame trumps the GM's right to set the power level he's comfortable to run with. Your reference to some kind of player democracy isn't sufficient, either -- as you put it, you can only be required to change your character if there is a unanimous verdict that it's not good. And they can't just dislike it, they have to be "upset or disagree heavily." So it's not even a player democracy, it's more like a system where you do whatever you want, and only a very extreme case of veto where not even one other person dissents is enough to change your path. Shouldn't it be enough for you, as a human being, that just one other person at the table says "I'm not comfortable with this?" You're willing to slap that one person in the face just because he doesn't have unanimous support? You meant to expose the arrogance of GM who rule by fiat, but all you've really done is show your support for a sort of rude, one-player-rule autocracy when it comes to chargen.

Yes, you nailed it. That's exactly what I said. Your insight and intelligence is unsurpassed. Thank you for shaming me with such a well-worded and thought-provoking response that so succinctly corrects my horrible, horrible view of the world. And thank you -- thank you -- for informing me that I'm a raving, powergaming psychopath simply because I feel a GM's role is not one of a dickless dictator overcompensating for his lack of said dick, but simply a referee and narrator for a shared storytelling experience. Until you informed me of this, I had no idea that they were one in the same thing. My enlightenment is complete now. Thank you. Thank you.

(Oh, and in case you couldn't tell -- which I wouldn't be surprised one iota by -- I'm being slightly sarcastic here.)

So let's see. You seem to be using an ad hominem attack to avoid responding to my argument. But you also seem to be saying that you already know the things I was telling you (sarcasm aside) so I need not have bothered. Which means you disclaim your previous statements? This whole thing would be a lot easier if you just responded to the argument by saying what you mean instead of crafting a sarcastic, ad hominem response essentially devoid of content.

No, it means I think you're a complete and utter dumbass who's not worth a serious reply. I was just trying to be relatively nice about saying that.

Oh, man, every time I think it might be cool to get back into Dumpshock, you guys do me a favor and remind me why I got away in the first place.

Back to the topic at hand: personally, I didn't find GURPS to be any more complex than Shadowrun. It models pretty much the same things, often in ways I agree with more. While creating characters for my game took a while (I handled that part for my players), it didn't take any longer than it would have had I used the default SR rules, and actual play felt much snappier.

Stick around. Doc is on a break to return the forum to civil levels of behavior.

Eh, I hate to start a flame war so I'm just going to clarify that what I meant by my statement was that I have to enjoy the game too. Since I'm doing the brunt of the work, I expect my players to respect that fact. And the point of the GM is to deliberate the rules. And if its a custom setting, one I spent to time to create the universe for (not just NPCs and adventures, but creating 70 years of history and world detailing) then ultimately it is I who decides what works for the players (notice I didn't say that I dictate their actions) and what fits in the universe, but as I said earlier, I decide this with input from the players. It is not a dictatorship. If I come up with a new mechanic for something, I run it by my players, ask them what they think of it, and if they have issues with it, I make an attempt to address those issues, making changes as needed until everyone is comfortable with it.

And on the other hand, if a player wants to do something that is not in the rules, I work with him to find an acceptable option.

So, in summary, its everyone's game, and a good group of players is more like a team, with the GM as team captain. Everyone contributes, but I'm the one who makes the final decisions. If I just make decisions without input from everyone else, then I shouldn't be GMing.

[edit: started making my post before I saw Redjack's reply. Sorry if my response is off base.]

I think everyone is responsible for a good story.

The players job is to give motivations and background for a good story. Ideally they should be determining the direction of the story and I reacting to what they want to do. They should be making their own runs, deciding where they want to go, and giving hooks for me to work off of. My expectation for any player is to flesh out the character and make sure the character works well with both the group and the mood of the game.

My job as a GM is not to punish creativity (ie the star trek incident is valid), it is however to keep the game internally consistent. Every action a PC does has an effect on the world and it is my job to reflect that. It is also my job to give challenges and stories for each character.

What does this really mean? As a player I ask the group what they need and play it. Hacker, rigger, face, Adept or Mage, etc. If the group is well rounded then I will pick specialist skills such as an armorer or doctor. If my character doesn't mesh well with the group then I will create a new one to match the group. As a GM it means I stop players who get bored from killing everyone, or I take a player aside and tell them their insane character is disrupting the game and needs to make one that meshes with the group. It also means if I don't enjoy the group I won't GM or play with the group.

As for alternate systems. I think in the end the real issue is do you enjoy the GM and the players? If you do then the system is less an issue than the people you are with and the story you are playing.

I think you're dead on here. A game table can't be an anarchy where everyone has an equal right to make decisions. Nor can it be a democracy where the players can veto the GM, or worse yet, each other. The GM is, in a very real sense, like a judge. It's his courtroom and he makes the final calls, but he's not doing his job unless he listens to both sides before banging his gavel. But if you keep arguing after he bangs the gavel, it's contempt of court for you The reason it works this way is that you can't game when people are constantly arguing. As we see from Dumpshock, sometimes people will NEVER agree on an issue no matter how long they discuss it. If you want to play, the GM needs to have the authority to make a decision and move on.

Now, relating to the rules of Shadowrun being problematic, I've said it many times in the past: when people say that the rules have problems, what they usually mean is that they have problems with the rules. For whatever reason, the rules don't strike the proper balance that they want to see. I think the OP is definitely within that category of people, since he talked about disliking how people can powergame in Shadowrun, essentially. I'm not saying that the rules are perfect, but most of what people complain about is not a bad system, but a system that wasn't customized exactly for them. The problem is, people fail to recognize that all RPGs are customized to the group -- by the players and GM, not by the book itself. What we've been discussing is exactly that, the GM's ability to limit character generation to suit the kind of campaign he wants to run. It's not only the right thing to do, but it's written all over the book that the GM is allowed to do it. Anyone who thinks the GM can't exercise this power frankly does not care about RAW, because per RAW, all RAW can be edited by the GM. The GM shouldn't do it for vindictive or arbitrary reasons, but he should do it to ensure that everyone is at the same power level and everyone has fun.