thread: 2012-06-11 : Ask a Frequent Question
On 2012-06-21, Gregor Vuga wrote:
The "golden GM" is still very much alive.
What was "destroyed", fairly efficiently, is the railroading, plot-writing, social-manipulating, illusionist, dishonest, players-are-the-problem GM. They are still around but I think their numbers have dwindled dramatically compared to say, five or six years ago. Or maybe I'm looking in the wrong places.
The "play by the rules as written" is a hot-button issue with the OSR crowd, even if we're total lovebirds otherwise. Their whole community is predicated on hacking, houseruling and _owning_ the game. Their argument is "the designer doesn't know my group" and you know what, they have a point there. But it's not a difference between following the rules in the book and being a good GM or doing it your way and being a bad GM. If you put the AW principles and moves side by side with Jeff Rients' (a prominent OSR blogger for those who don't know him) DM tips, they're almost identical in many aspects. I think it was Clyde Rhoer who articulated it, quite succinctly, that what their "good GMing" is the same thing we do, except in a black box instead on the page...
