Do you think there should be a licensing process to be allowed to run a game? When I was younger I seriously thought this because I had played with a bunch of random truly terrible GMs I found online before I found a decent group to play with. I've been thinking about it again and while I know it's unpractical because it's nearly unenforceable I can't help but feel there are too many incompetent GMs that drive players away from the hobby. My main issue is GMs who play fast and loose with the rules without informing the players ahead of time what rules their house ruling. If I knew you would not let me spend my gold on magic items the way the game is intended to be played because you want them to be rare in your setting why didn't you tell me this before I joined the game. If you are going to fudge rolls so that combat lasts longer then the 1-2 turns it'll take for us to kill your BBEG before I joined the game. Why didn't you tell us you were going to insert your fetishes into the game before I joined it?Under all of those circumstances and more I would not have joined your game and consider the 4-5 session it took to come up you wasting all of my free time.And naysayers who are going to claim "just play with your friends and it will work" I'm telling you right now I have over 20 years experience playing TTRPGs and playing with your friends doesn't help at all because it's still going to be a group of people with disparate wants out of the game. If anything playing with friends is worse than playing with randos because when you quit a campaign with randos it doesn't impact your relationship moving forward. I'm sure this thread will be ignored by the majority of posters but I just had to vent about this.
>>98846318>Do you think there should be a licensing process to be allowed to run a game? Imagine a world where you're calling the police because the hours-long activity you signed up for to do for free wasn't as fun as you'd hoped. >drive players away from the hobbyOh yeah, you know what would really get players to flock to the hobby? Needing to visit the equivalent of a DMV
You can filter out shitty players and GMs by talking to them. 99% of the time you can tell just by looking at the advertising post for the game.
>>98846318I've only know one guy who I would consider a pro at being a GM but he only ran a campaign every couple of years because of how much work he put into them. Things he did worth note.>Had a stack of PHB/CRB for any given game he just straight up gave to player's who needed one at no cost if they attended three consecutive sessions>Had a bunch of metal minis and would give one to a new player to represent their character while letting them use his paint station to paint it and help them with it>Had ambient music that fit the theme of the game softly playing in the background>Hand made terrain and "dungeons" using dental grade plaster and silicon molds to craft the solid bits painted and magnets at the bases to make it modular>The majority of the WORLD fleshed out with most cities, towns, and villages fully described in detail>Had several overall world states setup to reflect party successes and failures and how it would effect things globallyBiggest point though>He never gave the players a set quest. He just dropped hints and hooks but if the players ignored them, he noted it, listed those missed or ignored hints/hooks as failed states and altered shit in the game without telling players anything. He didn't hide anything either, he was completely content with players not touching 90% of the stuff he made and letting the world fall to run from player non-action.So, when the guy did run a game? It was always a damn good time. You could become heroic legends, major villains, or just fuck off enough that the game slowly evolved into an apocalypse setting because you were fucking off instead of handling shit you were aware of but ignored. He was just there to see what the guys at the table did and run upkeep.
>>98846318>should the police enforce the way we use our imaginationNo.
>>98846318>If anything playing with friends is worse than playing with randos because when you quit a campaign with randos it doesn't impact your relationship moving forward.Only valid point in the entire post. If you can't figure out that a GM is going to run the game you want to play just by talking to them for a while you don't have the social skills necessary for this hobby.
>>98846318>Do you think there should be a licensing process to be allowed to run a game?Fuck off, britcuck.>And naysayers who are going to claim "just play with your friends and it will work" I'm telling you right now I have over 20 years experience playing TTRPGs and playing with your friends doesn't help at allYou don't have any friends then, because we just... don't join games with each other we don't want to play in? You don't have to be part of every single game your friend group runs or plays man, like some of my friends I'm in games with are in a dark souls game using some homebrew system that I'm not part of because I don't care for Soulslikes, their tone, or their bleakness. Not my thing.>I'm sure this thread will be ignored by the majority of posters but I just had to vent about this.We know, you're an attention whore faggot who was an asshole to his "friends" and got booted from the friend group, and now you're a nogames faggot.
>>98846489I agree with this. Ditching a game mid adventure with people your never going to see again is a non-issue but doing it with your friends is going to damage your relationship.
>>98846318>If I knew you would not let me spend my gold on magic items the way the game is intended to be played because you want them to be rare in your setting why didn't you tell me this before I joined the game.Valid point. You shouldn't need to ask them to find this out it should be info they give out up front.>If you are going to fudge rolls so that combat lasts longer then the 1-2 turns it'll take for us to kill your BBEG before I joined the game?Protecting their precious story is something bad GMs are notorious for. These are people who would be better off just riding a novel and running a game. However it is completely ridiculous to have some sort of governing body deciding who doesn't doesn't get to run games. If you're looking for a new group and the GM doesn't want to play 20 questions to figure out if you want to join or not they are probably not a GM worth playing with.
>>98846558Is it? I've seen people bail on games they weren't feeling, there were no hard feelings because we're not emotionally stunted contrarian subhumans like 99.99999% of 4chan.
>>98846493>Fuck off, britcuck.Licenses are very much a German thing.
>>98846573>Protecting their precious story is something bad GMs are notorious for. I've had this happen once and I did ditch the campaign after giving them a rant over it. This was back before it was easy to find games online, I was in the basement having a rant over how his boss encounter was BS because they "passed" every save that would have inflicted a status effect or insta-killed his stupid character. That just isn't playing the game, it telling a story with a fixed outcome.
>>98846645>That just isn't playing the game, it telling a story with a fixed outcome.Same feeling. I've seen this happen a few times in the last decade. I have no idea why so many players are tolerant of it.
>Why didn't you tell us you were going to insert your fetishes into the game before I joined it?Because then you'd leave just like you said and the entire point was to involve the captive audience in the fetish without their consent.
>>98846815In this case it was monstrous humanoid war rape.
>>98846318>Do you think there should be a licensing process to be allowed to run a game?Yes, but playoids should also be forced to be registered like sex offenders
>>98846318>playing with your friends doesn't help at all because it's still going to be a group of people with disparate wants out of the game.Have you never previously encountered the concept of a compromise?
