Quote from: Bren;858372We definitely have different experiences with our GMs. I find it takes a fair amount of effort to summarize the insights in culture, history, and language derived from wide reading to people who don't read. That's part of what I was trying to say about narrowness and shallowness vs. depth and breadth of information.

This is my experience too. I am open to the possibilities that there are great GM's that don't read a lot... I've just never seen one. I twitch a little when some oddity springs up that has no real basis in the game, that isn't there for a reason. Even if I don't know what the reason was.

For instance I had this newb-GM who is in real life an incredibly smart guy, doesn't read a lot outside of his work-related stuff, he tells us in his world the mountains that surround us are impossibly high. Like... 100-miles high... so I'm like, hunh? okay. Then when he starts describing things as we go - nothing about the world makes sense based on that stipulation. In fact while it was even somewhat interesting that we were completely locked in on our continent, I assumed there were caverns and stuff that tunneled through- but nope. So then when I started asking questions about how did these other races get here... he vaporlocked. OOPS...

Quote from: Bren;858372We definitely have different experiences with our GMs. I find it takes a fair amount of effort to summarize the insights in culture, history, and language derived from wide reading to people who don't read. That's part of what I was trying to say about narrowness and shallowness vs. depth and breadth of information.

Our expectations as players may be different as well. What I've found is the guy who watches Kung Fu movies all day long can put together just as fun and exciting a campaign for me as the guy who does nothing but read books on Chinese history and culture. Those are going to likely be two very different campaigns, but they can both be just as fun and exciting (and informed in their own way). In reality though of course, few people are that extreme on either end. But I've definitely met folks who just don't read that much that can still run and manage a highly entertaining campaign.

Quote from: Bren;858372I find it takes a fair amount of effort to summarize the insights in culture, history, and language derived from wide reading to people who don't read. That's part of what I was trying to say about narrowness and shallowness vs. depth and breadth of information.

Since the OP does imply concern for the reading habits of Players as well... of course a good game hinges on more than just what the GM has been exposed to. The 'Worlds Greatest GM' still won't be able to do much with a bunch of intellectual sluggards at the table... even just for purposes of basic communication and having a larger vocabulary available.

Quote from: tenbones;858331Would you say that your games have hit the "Great" level? By that I mean you, and your players are jonesing to get to the next session, and emails are flying, IM's and texts are hammering you while you try to do your dayjob. Some old bastard is griping how you need to set up an Obsidian Portal site for the game so they can journal - or something along those lines?

Based on your description, I'd say I've at least come close in the past, maybe even hit it.  Specifically, back when Shadowrun first came out, I was in college and ran a game that got there pretty consistently.  At its peak, I had 9 active players, with another 8 or 9 who wanted to play and occasionally joined us as spectators.  Most of us lived in the same dorm and people would stop me in the hall with questions about the game or ask to set up solo sessions for their character between the main weekly sessions.  It was intense, but also the only time I've really hit that zone.

More recently, I've run an ACKS campaign where I was the old bastard bringing in Obsidian Portal.  Two of the players and I were into it enough that, between the three of us, we'd sometimes add 20 or so posts to the campaign forum in a day, but the other three players were generally happy just to show up for the actual game sessions and leave it at that.

Going back to your original question, I was still reading fiction when I did the Shadowrun game in college, but probably not more than a book or so a month on average.  Unfortunately, it's hard to assess how significant a factor the drop in my fiction-consumption since then might be, since it's also coincided with a long gaming hiatus (I played a total of about a dozen RPG sessions between 1996 and 2012) and the general increase of real-world demands as one goes from their early 20s to their early 40s.

Quote from: tenbones;858336I try to tell that to a lot of new GM's. You WILL FAIL. Campaigns crater all the time. It's not always your fault, but sometimes it is. The key is to get back into the saddle.

Truth!

I think a great game requires a strong flow from the GM to the players. The GM can provide a great game to players with less demanding tastes, but if the players have a block to what the GM offers (like you example where the players notice problems the GM hasn't noticed yet), then that will tend to spoil things.

Which means, tenbones, that you as an experienced well-read player, will have a higher bar to finding a GM who offers a game that will be a great time for you. And your filters and view of what's great is going to be colored by what you've read. But as much as I agree that the ill-considered 100-mile mountains were BS in many ways and he'll be a better GM if he learns some lessons (and doesn't get too discouraged by them), maybe he could be a a great GM for similarly-inexperienced or not-logically-demanding players, at least for a while until the situation itself broke down.

There were many games I loved as a kid and a less-experienced adult player, that I now couldn't stand to play. There are campaign materials and RPG sessions I've run and we all had a great time, but I'd now not do anything like them.

After several years of GM experience, I was running games using complex tactical rules but making them accessible to small kids who had never roleplayed, and players from other systems who had never used a battle map, and they were able to get right into play and have a great time because I was translating all the action and choices into natural language. However, as a player, I avoid playing games that I know won't satisfy my now very particular tastes and sensitivities, which is almost all of them. My skin crawls a bit every time I hear about games that don't use battle maps, or people who think detailed realism or dangerous combat are the opposite of fun, etc etc. I end up biting my tongue a lot so as not to spoil the fun of players who don't have my tastes, because I know that they're in a different place.

In most genres it isn't a problem, but in supers it is huge, or it used to be. The various DCAU cartoons as well Earth's Mightiest Heroes have made a huge difference. However, at one time, it was entirely possible to get someone at the table who had no experience with capes beyond the live action Batman TV show from the 1960's. It happend to me. Combined with fact that the dude in question was a thespy dork at best- that shit was game breaking painful.

It was more of a GM problem when I was even younger, though. I am from the Holmes wave, but I spent my entire childhood with my nose in a book, and had read most of the important stuff on the Appendix N list before I ever played- or saw the list, for that matter. I don't think any of the groups I played with had members that read anything for pleasure until just before I went off to college. Our games mostly sucked, but I didn't have any basis for comparison.

Quote from: Skarg;858530I think a great game requires a strong flow from the GM to the players. The GM can provide a great game to players with less demanding tastes, but if the players have a block to what the GM offers (like you example where the players notice problems the GM hasn't noticed yet), then that will tend to spoil things.

I find that I definitely down-shift the scope and complexities of my games based on the relative "newness" factor of my players for this reason. Especially if I don't know them personally before bringing them in.

It's a sniff-test for everyone. I usually have a few advanced sub-plots waiting to be worked on just in case... but it's important for me as both a player and GM to make sure the start of the game is damn near air-tight in terms of consistency. That's why it's good to start small. I'm leery of new GM's trying to go all out, it turns into setting masturbation like newby writers that infodump their fantasy-world's histories on you in the first chapter... ugh. Or worse... a fucking prologue.

Quote from: Skarg;858530Which means, tenbones, that you as an experienced well-read player, will have a higher bar to finding a GM who offers a game that will be a great time for you. And your filters and view of what's great is going to be colored by what you've read. But as much as I agree that the ill-considered 100-mile mountains were BS in many ways and he'll be a better GM if he learns some lessons (and doesn't get too discouraged by them), maybe he could be a a great GM for similarly-inexperienced or not-logically-demanding players, at least for a while until the situation itself broke down.

Yeah. I have really fucked up games inadvertently because of this. I generally try to hang back when I'm playing because I don't wanna push on the GM.

Funny story (about me fucking things up) - About a year ago I let one of my players GM. He's a total rookie and wanted to run a small adventure. No problem! So we're playing and we were after these assassins and we managed to figure out they fled north. Two days later we fun into this small trading outpost.

The GM starts describing things and he mentions this big warehouse, like a REALLY big one. I start thinking "A big warehouse? This is a small trading post! That's kinda odd. I'd have figured at best maybe a bunch of small storage sheds. Hmm?" So I ask "How old is this place? Have we ever heard about it? (we were new to the relative region)"

GM says almost quietly after a pause - "It looks... really new. You've never heard of this place."

My Spidersense kicks in. "My character goes into the warehouse. What's in there?"

GM - Uhh... crates. Lots of crates.

Me - Like a LOT of crates? like how many?

GM - Stacked to the ceiling. It's uhh.. 20-feet high.

Me - That's a lot of fucking crates! Any guards or workers?

GM - None near you.

Me - I walk into the warehouse, and I use my short-sword to try and pry one of the crates open. What's in it?

GM - There's nothing in the crate.

Me - Alarmed. WTF? What do you mean there's nothing in the crate? I go to another one. I open it.

GM - Nothing.

Me - NOTHING?!?! I check four more!

GM - There's nothing in the crates. You start checking all of the crates - there's nothing in them.

Me - Alarmed. Holy shit. This place is a setup. It's a TRAP!...

...It wasn't until after I'd panicked the other players and they started slaughtering all of the innocents that the GM just gave up. I was shocked. I honestly thought it was something like Michael Douglas in the movie The Game where he's in this house and the whole thing is fake. I later realized the GM was trying to improvise *because* I was nosing around and he simply didn't know what to say. My checking all the crates made him feel like I was putting him on the spot and he didn't know what to put in them, nor how big the dimensions of a warehouse in a trading post should/would be etc.

The funniest thing about that - to this day, my players will tease me if they walk into a warehouse and say "What's in the crate?"

And I tell them - Go ahead and look. I guarantee you I can tell you what's in all two-hundred and fifty-three crates and they'll all be different. Go ahead. Look. I dare you.

Anyhow... yeah. I inadvertently killed that game.

Quote from: Aos;858547In most genres it isn't a problem, but in supers it is huge, or it used to be. The various DCAU cartoons as well Earth's Mightiest Heroes have made a huge difference. However, at one time, it was entirely possible to get someone at the table who had no experience with capes beyond the live action Batman TV show from the 1960's. It happend to me. Combined with fact that the dude in question was a thespy dork at best- that shit was game breaking painful.

Supers definitely has its own sub-genres. That's why it's important to set up the players with what the setting is about thematically. Especially if they don't know anything about comics in general. The MCU movies and modern animated shows have definitely changed things. But yeah - I usually give everyone a primer (see my post in 4d Sandbox thread) to "situate things".

Quote from: Aos;858547It was more of a GM problem when I was even younger, though. I am from the Holmes wave, but I spent my entire childhood with my nose in a book, and had read most of the important stuff on the Appendix N list before I ever played- or saw the list, for that matter. I don't think any of the groups I played with had members that read anything for pleasure until just before I went off to college. Our games mostly sucked, but I didn't have any basis for comparison.

I think this kind of drives my point of suspicion. The reading-thing seems to be a big indicator for having a "great game", and I don't mean purely for rip-off potential. That kinda inspiration can usually drive a home-brew for years.

I'm still wait-and-see when it comes to other media.

Quote from: tenbones;858648I think this kind of drives my point of suspicion. The reading-thing seems to be a big indicator for having a "great game", and I don't mean purely for rip-off potential. That kinda inspiration can usually drive a home-brew for years.

I'm still wait-and-see when it comes to other media.

Is it possible this is more a product of you being on the same page with people who have read similar things or have similar backgrounds?

Quote from: tenbones;858646I later realized the GM was trying to improvise *because* was nosing around and simply didn't know what to say. My checking all the crates made him feel like I was putting him on the spot and he didn't know what to put in them, nor how big the dimensions of a warehouse in a trading post should/would be etc.

When I'm a player in a game with a new GM I tend to do a lot of thinking out loud, especially if it starts to look like things are going off the rails.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;858651Is it possible this is more a product of you being on the same page with people who have read similar things or have similar backgrounds?

Interesting point. I find myself having players that aren't as experienced in a lot of the genres that my games draw inspiration from. To me, it's not that big of a deal, I take my role as a GM as a part-time salesman to get buy-in even while in the middle of the game. But in order to do that I need to cultivate what I found inspirational from whatever reading material (and other sources) in-game and make it wtfawesome fun.

In my experience you can only get buy-in so far before the game starts. The best you can do is set up some low-end expectations. The rest you have to GM your ass off to give room to the players to figure out how to take off and fly.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;858651Is it possible this is more a product of you being on the same page with people who have read similar things or have similar backgrounds?

I'm sure that's a factor. I don't know how to separate affiliation from other effects of a GM who reads a lot though.

I've read pretty widely, so if someone reads a lot, especially fiction, chances are really good that I've read something in the area they enjoy that I can draw upon (yes even Harlequin romances) even if we don't read similar things in general.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;858651Is it possible this is more a product of you being on the same page with people who have read similar things or have similar backgrounds?

Absolutely.  Doesn't matter how 'well read' people are, if they're an expert in Japanese mythology and is running such a campaign, but their players are European Medieval enthusiasts, it ain't gonna fly.

Quote from: tenbones;858669Interesting point. I find myself having players that aren't as experienced in a lot of the genres that my games draw inspiration from. To me, it's not that big of a deal, I take my role as a GM as a part-time salesman to get buy-in even while in the middle of the game. But in order to do that I need to cultivate what I found inspirational from whatever reading material (and other sources) in-game and make it wtfawesome fun.

In my experience you can only get buy-in so far before the game starts. The best you can do is set up some low-end expectations. The rest you have to GM your ass off to give room to the players to figure out how to take off and fly.

I guess where I am heading with this is I think it is less about the reading and more about common interests, experience and expectations. I read quite a bit. But try putting me in a room full of gamers who adore football and are super into cars, and I am going to have a hard time running a game that is believable to them when those two things come up.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;858679Absolutely.  Doesn't matter how 'well read' people are, if they're an expert in Japanese mythology and is running such a campaign, but their players are European Medieval enthusiasts, it ain't gonna fly.

I completely disagree. This depends far more on how much of an annoying pedant the GM is and how interested and willing to learn something new the Medievalists are.

The experiences of people who enjoy playing in and learning about Tekumel or Glorantha provide excellent counterexamples of your point. MAR Barker clearly was an expert on Tekumel, but from everything I've read and heard he was many things, but an annoying pedant was not one of them. Also players like Chirine and Gronan (and me) were happy to learn something new about Tekumel even though our expertises lie in other areas, just like my players (and players in many other games) have been happy over the years to learn about Glorantha.