I purposefully haven't gone into what happened with my friend, but since this seems to be a sticking point for more than one person, I will oblige; though even this will be a condensed form. First and foremost, he IS my friend. He's the GM for our other game and has been playing RPGs almost longer than I've been alive. This matters because he's seen a lot of shitty campaigns over the years and is very particular with what he'll put up with. If this was a continuous problem, he would have left a while ago.

There also seems to be a misconception that I was extremely rude and essentially told him to fuck off that night. Actually, I handled it no differently than I would have any other time. I simply told him that we would not discuss it then and we would take care of it after the game. At my table (I'm going to assume I'm the GM in these cases, but these rules apply no matter who is behind the screen), as I implied in my first post, we have a rule that most objections are handled after the game to prevent the game from bogging down. Sometimes players will have me move to another player while they look up the ruling in question and then call my attention back when they find it. To go along with that, if a player objects, I have the option of either pausing the game for a few minutes or telling them "We'll talk later." It is generally understood that when I do that, it means I made the ruling for reasons that I don't want discussed in front of the group as a whole. This can be for a multitude of reasons, but always comes with an implied "Trust me, would ya?" And generally, my players do. This one time in particular was a horrible exception.

Now, to alleviate people's fears, I did admit to him that I made a mistake and apologized. He also apologized for acting like a spoiled child when I told him we'd talk after game. He had basically sat there the entire night becoming madder and madder and exploded at me instead of discussing it like adults. While you might think this was an acceptable response for being railroaded (based on your first post), it's not. Our youngest player is 25 years old and most of us are in our 30s. We act like adults, even when we're mad, because we are fucking adults. I do call it butthurt because that's exactly what it was. What he did was overreact and for it to have continued beyond that session was completely ridiculous. If I remember right, he harassed me for four days via texts. I waited until those stopped before I would even talk about talking about it. When we did sit down to figure it all out, I didn't demand an apology or anything silly like that, I only told him why I made the call. I walked him through all of my logic, which went fine actually. What he didn't appreciate was me telling him to quit being the one to do everything and let the others have their chance to shine. Any GM will tell you that this is never an easy talk. However well thought out and polite your arguments, no one EVER likes being told what in their mind is "STOP BEING SO DAMN AWESOME." I basically had to go over the last six sessions action by action and have him count how many times he did things versus the rest of the group before he would admit he'd been stealing people's thunder. That part of the conversation was not nice or fun in any way.

And honestly? The friend in question totally would laugh about me calling him butthurt. That's the kind of people we are. --shrugs--


Quite simply I was stating that I've been at this a while. I didn't declare myself an expert for at least another few sentences. Seriously though, that's all I was intending to point out. I personally don't know a GM that's been at it for over ten years that any of us would consider a bad GM. I'm sure they exist, but GMing is a field (is that the right word?) that tends to drum out those who aren't cut out for it. Either players leave groups and they have no one to play with or they end up getting so much negative feedback they throw their hands up and quit. Anecdotal, yeah, but I think we both could agree on GMing not being an easy thing and to be asked to do it consistently for 15+ years means that someone thinks I'm doing things right.

On a quick, silly note, choosing driving wasn't the best example. Cars and racing is one of the few things I'm nerdier about than RPGs. I'm currently trying to figure out how to afford another car since my wife gave me permission to do pro-am.


At the risk of sounding like Plasteel Frankenstein, I don't believe a GM can tell a coherent story without a little bit of railroading. Let me explain. I believe that most players actually don't want to be just given a character and a setting and be let loose. Players that want that kind of game will play games without GMs, ones like Fiasco or Ribbon Drive (look 'em up on DriveThruRPG, you'll be glad you did). Part of the expectation of having a GM at the table is that he will put a story in front of you. Sometimes that's a canned mission, sometimes that's working through a character's deep and mysterious backstory. A GM guiding a story can't happen at all without some form of railroading. The problem comes when you start doing things like the "mysterious drone killing shadow" or "the Maglock of Doom." In order for a group to work well together, there has to be a certain amount of give and take from both the players and the GM. Sometimes that means the GM has to say "Okay, I'll allow you to build a ramp over the caldera of a volcano to jump over as part of your plan to fake your death." Sometimes that means a player has to accept it when you say "Well, you decided to launch your grappling hook at the command chopper of the HTR team currently hunting your ass down. Your teammate decided to push you out of the moving car because you did this. I'm sorry, after the damage you took from that and ensuing bloodbath, you'll need to create a new runner." Sometimes, they even happen in the same plot arc. Point is, railroading happens. A good GM just makes it look like it was the player's idea all along.

Now I'm gonna attack you for a second here. Sorry. Just bear with me.

If you're willing to walk away from a table because of a single "no," then you need to grow up a bit. An RPG isn't about you doing whatever the hell you want and never having any opposition. If that's what you're looking for, to paraphrase Dracos18, "write a book, not play an RPG." And bragging about organizing mass walk-outs? All that succeeds in doing is making you look like a colossal dick.

Okay, now that I'm done with that, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you're not actually a colossal dick. I'm going to assume you're not going to walk out over something like that the first time it happens. I'm also going to assume that you tried to talk to your GM and had exhausted every other available option first. I will still say that a mass walk-out is never the right choice. The better choice would be to not show up in the first place.


Actually? I knew exactly what I sounded like, hence the comment about waving my dick around. I was poking a bit of fun at myself there. I do appreciate the fact you're willing to take my claims at face value though (assuming no sarcasm). I'm not one to lie on the internet to make myself look better. If I did, you think I'd admit to such a colossal fuck up as this?


Nope, which is why I referred to it "bordering on a personal attack." It honestly wouldn't have taken much to push it over that line though.


No, "I'd have fucking walked on your ass" is NOT a useful reply. All it does it tell me that rather than wait for the explanation that I'd said I'd give you at the end of the night, you'd storm off like a three year old. Beyond stating you'd walk out of my game, all you did was very angrily tell me what Faelan already had: That I needed to figure out a nicer way to cockblock the hacker. And seeing has how I'd already explained why I didn't go with my other options in a previous post (mostly because it had already been established by a character looking directly at the fucking door that there was a maglock on it and suddenly changing that would have pissed off a lot more people than just the hacker), I don't feel that you particularly added anything to the conversation.