I usually end up running campaigns with settings AND systems I am new to. This can be a pain, since I addition to mastering the setting and preparing for sessions, I also struggle with the new system. I'm ta my unproven belief that most great GMs run a only handful of systems they are familiar with, and just convert settings where necessary. This seems like a better plan for people like me.

What do you do? What do the great GMs you know do?

Learning new systems and discovering them together as a group can be fun. There is of course more prep involved and mistakes on both sides of the screen are likely until everyone understands things a bit better.

The important question to answer is why are you constantly running new systems? Is it out of curiosity just to try new things or are you looking for a play experience and so far no system you have tried is giving it to you?

If it is the latter, think about your group and whether or not a new system will help out or if you and your players have wildly different expectations.

There are advantages to mastering a few systems instead of trying out dozens. Once you are very comfortable with a system then converting material into that system is a breeze and you can run with less prep time.

System mastery is a small part of good GMing.

Most GMs (good or not) settle on a particular style of GMing and lean toward systems they feel work for their style.

I'll Play just about anything... but if I'm going to run a game I've got my go-to systems and it's gonna take some doing to sell me on running something new, rather than just stealing ideas from it.
For a while I played in a group with a GM who flitted about from system to system, no more than a couple of sessions before moving on to the next new hotness. It was annoying and convinced me I don't want to play in groups that flit around like that.

Eh, I suspect that most people eventually treat the systems as tools, and find a few that they use and gravitate to.

As others have said, I think a great question is why you're trying all of these systems.  If you're looking for something to 'fix' a problem, there might be non-systems answers that are more appropriate.  A good GM and group can have a lot of fun in a lot of different systems, so if you continually are having bad experiences, the system might not be the first thing to look at.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;848609I'm ta my unproven belief that most great GMs run a only handful of systems they are familiar with, and just convert settings where necessary.

I think that you are right due to a coincidence - a very large part of players only ever get involved in a handful of different games, and consequently, a significant number of gamemasters do as well. Naturally, that includes both a lot of good ones as well as truly bad ones.
 
As far as I can tell, a good gamemaster knows well enough what he likes and what he is good at (which is most often very much the same, enthralling gamemastering is after all mostly the result of infectuous enthusiasm) to concentrate on a certain style, setting, genre or the like for any given campaign. Not being a pushover or trying to twist and warp a campaign to accomodate the players as much as possible is not a good sign. Yes, that means that for a certain "vision" of a campaign a setting conversion is an appropriate and completely legitimate decision, but doing a good conversion is also a lot of work (trust me on that).

However, it is also not a particularly good sign to actively avoid other impressions and ideas or to assume that there is only one true way. Trying new stuff is great and educative, even if it fails (I would argue that complete disassters of a campaign can teach you more, but that doesn't make them any more enjoyable). Pretty much the worst players and gamemasters I ever met were using only one system or setting exclusively and used this narrow-mindedness as a badge of honor ("I don't need to flitter from one system to another. My system is perfect"). And that attitude is only ever limiting  and restrictive (also, only the mediocre think of themselves as perfect).
Getting interested in new stuff, if only to mine it for ideas, is not only potentially entertaining, it is also a good way to gather good ideas and implement them in any way you see fit.

Also, personal taste changes. It is quite possible to just get oversatuated or fatigued by a certain system or setting. I have run Werewolf campaigns for over a decade, including some of my best gamemastering experiences, but I cannot stand the system any longer. I could probably write a conversion from oWoD storyteller to something less nauseating (BRP/Runequest, combined with a historical campaign sounds about right), but that's a lot of work. Other games and settings seem more rewarding than that for a lot less effort.

Quote from: Beagle;848647Pretty much the worst players and gamemasters I ever met were using only one system or setting exclusively and used this narrow-mindedness as a badge of honor ("I don't need to flitter from one system to another. My system is perfect").

The worst players and gamemasters I've ever met were bad for reasons that had nothing to do with what systems they were or weren't playing. They would have been dicks if they'd been playing checkers.

We finish campaigns and people are happy with them, then sort of randomly pick anything that catches our eye. The focus usually is on setting (which may come with a system). We picked V20 cause we wanted to do vampire dark ages setting, savage Worlds because we wanted to do Accursed setting, cypher because we wanted to play in the Numenera setting  etc. My players have had no complaints about systems except for Fate.

My impression is that most GMs and groups don't do this - they mostly stick with a genre, setting , etc, which means the GM gets to focus on a system.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;848609I usually end up running campaigns with settings AND systems I am new to. This can be a pain, since I addition to mastering the setting and preparing for sessions, I also struggle with the new system. I'm ta my unproven belief that most great GMs run a only handful of systems they are familiar with, and just convert settings where necessary. This seems like a better plan for people like me.

What do you do? What do the great GMs you know do?

It depends on if I think the new system is worth a shit or not.

I prefer Classic Traveller and Mongoose Traveller over T4 and I prefer all of those over Stars Without Number. Why? Well, I think the inclusion of a D&D style character and combat system detracts from the genre emulation of a lot of science fiction. I prefer d6 WEG Star Wars over d20 and FFG because d6 WEG emulates the action of the Star Wars books, movies, and cartoons better. I think that Cyberpunk 2020 is better than Shadowrun because it has too much fantasy in the science fiction - yes, there was a Vampire  and Lovecraftian Horror 3PP add-on to Cyberpunk 2020 and yet it didn't detract from the cyberpunk vibe of the game.

Never mistake the tools for the talent.

Talent will likely have experience with different tools. That said, they will have favorites and strengths. And when the pressure is on and they have to create they will fall back on such familiar tools.

Tools are just that. Some work for certain jobs better than others. They almost always can be improvised into something else. However that usually ends up not quite hitting that sweet spot.

The magic between tools and talent is finesse. By then talent knows how to play up a tool's strength to their (the talent's) strengths. That's when you see them bend the results into ways unexpected and beautiful.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;848673We finish campaigns and people are happy with them, then sort of randomly pick anything that catches our eye. The focus usually is on setting (which may come with a system). We picked V20 cause we wanted to do vampire dark ages setting, savage Worlds because we wanted to do Accursed setting, cypher because we wanted to play in the Numenera setting  etc. My players have had no complaints about systems except for Fate.

My impression is that most GMs and groups don't do this - they mostly stick with a genre, setting , etc, which means the GM gets to focus on a system.

Well if you are constantly grabbing new settings and systems, why does the same person have to keep running the game? Rotate the GM position as often as you rotate games and no one person will have to learn so many systems completely.

Quote from: Simlasa;848656The worst players and gamemasters I've ever met were bad for reasons that had nothing to do with what systems they were or weren't playing. They would have been dicks if they'd been playing checkers.

+1.

I see no reason why I should ditch the expertise in GURPS I enjoy over several decades of running the game to indulge in the Phat Kewl Noo System de Jour.  Even supposing the new system is ever so much superior -- something alleged an order of magnitude more often than proven -- the learning curve involved is a serious offset.

(I imagine, of course, that to those who continually flip from this system to that, the drawbacks of constantly having to learn systems aren't something they perceive.  SOP and all.)

As such, I have no problems converting things.  Give me an adventure written for another system?  Great.  Soandso NPC is a great swordswoman?  I know what that looks like in GURPS.  The lock on the door to the Inner Sanctum is especially tough?  I know what that looks like in GURPS.  The Big Bad's mooks are weak and demoralized troopers?  Fair enough, I build the template on 50 rather than 100.

And so on.  I expect just about any GM familiar with a system can do the same.

I just like to try different games? Learning new rules and playing with different mechanics can be fun. Or not: I only really find out through play.

I've run decades of GURPS, so it's second nature to me, and usually seems silly for me to use anything else. It's so easy and fast for me, I can translate everything into English for the players, imagine up new NPCs with appropriate stats in an instant, I understand the balance of things, and know or can fudge up rules for almost any situation.

I've tried running other games for fun or curiosity or variety, which can be interesting, but unless the game is something entirely different (like *Microscope*, or using a spaceship simulation or a wargame to resolve some military combat). I usually either don't like the lack of detail, or it doesn't seem right, or I swap in some familiar mechanics, or I just don't get the balance, and/or it doesn't make sense to me.

For example, I tried making some locations for the *Neverwinter Nights* (D&D computer game that lets you do multiplayer games with GM & players), but even though I'd played hours of it single-player, the power levels of the monsters was so weird to me that I didn't get how to populate places and have it seem to make sense to me. I couldn't get over the feeling of pointlessness of making detailed locations where a bunch of orcs and goblins would live, knowing that they could be completely outclassed and uninterestingly zero-challenge annihilated by a few PCs if they were sufficiently high-level, or in theory if any higher-level monster were there - I have a hard time understanding a world with extremely-stratified power levels with many tiers and magic with all sorts of complex high-power effects, because I like to have a grasp on what the power balance in a place is like, and I feel way out of my depth, and have no idea what would happen if it were a simulation even if I knew what all the inhabitants were like.

Sometimes I like to try another system briefly, but my interest tends to end once I've gotten familiar with the system, at which point I either want to stop playing, or convert it to GURPS. But I have limited time resources so this rarely lasts.

I fairly often take peeks at rules for other systems, but I usually pretty quickly decide I don't like the way they do things, since my taste is so far in the "I want very detailed and realistic rules and tactical combat" direction.

That's interesting.  I use several different systems, and I find that I have to significantly shift my mental gears when I switch between them.  Like, it's an almost tactile sensation as I switch from one mindset to the other.