Quote from: DestroyYouAlot;626228All in all, knowing a game system is important for a GM.  Knowing when to supplement, alter, disregard, or simply dispense with the system in play is important for a good GM - but it's a lot harder than the first part.  GMs who don't make the cut can simply frame this as "making shit up", MTP, etc., if it makes them feel better.

Quote from: Kaiu Keiichi;625455You grinding your "I hate story games" axe again, Pundit?

Crappy GMs are a perrenial blight upon this hobby. While players and GMs have the right to tinker, GMs can't hide behind their viking hats. These are games, games have rules, and often I've seen good rules sets trip up craps GMs who never even bothered to read the rules sets they promised to. This happened to me in Traveller, of all places, when an old gm I had wanted to arbitrarily change the charge rules. Another case was in Exalted, when a gm wanted to deny all Solar exalted use of perfect defenses. I walked in both cases, and each game collapsed a few sessions later.

Rules sets don't teach people how to gm, they're not supposed to. But GMs who refuse to read and learn rules sets and want to improvise like mad free form gamers are ones who I'm pretty sure suck. every time I've stuck around for gms who refuse to deal with players and negotiate in a reasonable manner has always turned into a massive clusterfuck of epic proportions where no one has fun and everyone walks away from the table pissed.

Bad gaming starts from a fundamental lack of respect of players and arbitrary demands of authority. This is not a trade vs story game thing. This is s not being a jerk thing.