Quote from: PencilBoy99;848609What do you do? What do the great GMs you know do?

It kinda depends on the game and the setting.  Is the game THE feature?  How disconnected is it to the setting.

I'll give you an example: Earthdawn.  To me, the setting and system for Earthdawn go hand in hand.  You can't really separate the two.  Well, you could, but you'd end up doing so much work to replicate the flavor of the system in a different system that it just isn't worth it.

OTOH, look at 50 Fathoms for Savage Worlds.  You could run that with DnD 5e or GURPS and still have a bang up game.  That's the cool thing about SW (and DnD, too).  The game system is its own thing, an other than a few assumptions its very easy to divorce the system from setting.  Savage FR?  No problem.  DnD Sundered Skies?  Why not.  This doesn't always work out (Deadlands could be tricky, mainly because they've already done so much work adding the flavor of Deadlands to the SW game in those books), but usually it isn't an issue.

My current Witch Hunter campaign is pretty much a reboot of my old Savage World of Solomon Kane game with a different system and a more interwoven backstory.  I'm using almost the same archvillain(s) that the players never met, the same secret history of the world, and even some of the same characters.  We're coming up on the two year point with it now.  I don't think it would have been worth the switch if we were only going to play a couple of sessions or even a short campaign.  But for a multiyear arch, I'm glad we did.

So it's pretty much like anything else these days, with kids, family, job, commitments.  You have to weigh the pros and cons of investing the time and effort into learning a new system.  If the pros outweigh the cons, well there you go.

Tom

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.

In a similar fashion, the great basketball players only excel at shooting OR defense, never both; the great composers only write for a single type of instrument; and the great writers only use words starting with T.

...

So, in other words, no. In fact, I would argue the exact opposite: Great GMs grow from having wide and diverse experiences, learning lessons from those experiences which they can then apply in other contexts.

Now, great GMs will also tend to learn what does and doesn't work for them, and they'll achieve mastery over the systems they've found that work well for them. (And that mastery, in itself, is a huge asset which is difficult to replace.)

But I suspect that the great GMs never truly stop experimenting and exploring. They'll continue to go out, play around for a bit, and then bring the lessons back home. (Although not all lessons are transferable and the truly great GMs will be able to recognize that different jobs require different tools.)

Otherwise they're like a novelist who says, "Well, that's it. I'm only reading books about unicorns for the rest of my life." They're going to rapidly stagnate.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;848867In a similar fashion, the great basketball players only excel at shooting OR defense, never both; the great composers only write for a single type of instrument; and the great writers only use words starting with T.

A less nonsensical comparison would be athletes who thrive in a variety of sports vs. concentrating on one... musicians who write across a variety of styles of music or writers who cover many different genres. They exist but most of the greats who pop to mind tended to narrow their focus a bit.
Not saying it's bad to read and play widely, it's generally good to experience new things... but when you 'bring the lessons back home' it helps to have a home to return to, rather just wandering the countryside aimlessly.

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.

You are right. What I meant is a special kind of pretty bad players who were bad because they were oh so proud about their one true game. Narrow-mindedness is a particularly bad base for elitism. But there are probably many universally awful players out there, who can suck the fun out of any game they play, not just one specific game.
And I would add: I have nothing against any player who have playtested several games, found one that truly sang to him and stayed with it; if anyone is happy with this one system and/or setting for the rest of his life, and if this enthusiasm can be transfered to the rest of the players, the resulting games are probably going to be pretty good for all involved people. However, that is a different attitude in my eyes from "you fool, why do you try all these games? There is only one game that matters, and that happens to be my favourite".

Quote from: Beagle;848872What I meant is a special kind of pretty bad players who were bad because they were oh so proud about their one true game.

I haven't met that guy, but I'd guess his attitude about his game is just a symptom of a larger problem that would probably be readily apparent even before we got around to discussing what to play.

Quote from: Simlasa;848875I haven't met that guy, but I'd guess his attitude about his game is just a symptom of a larger problem that would probably be readily apparent even before we got around to discussing what to play.

Come to that, I haven't met that guy either.  I rather expect his existence is far more a case of stung feelings over refusals to system shop than that there are actually people strutting around saying "Well, I'm a Savage Worlds gamer, nyah nyah!"

What I have met, by contrast, is "you fool, why do you stick to only one system? A real gamer is one who'll drop everything familiar to try out new systems ... coincidentally, a one I just bought a copy of" people.

 

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?

I found a system that I liked and now adapt that system to new things.

It is far easier than using many different systems that don;t do things as well, or don't do things a lot better.

If I find something in a system that does things a lot better, then I adapt that and use it in my favourite system.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;848673My 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.

In my experience the GM picks a setting and puts it on offer, the players then say if they think that is great, acceptable, so-so, or no. Players might lobby for something if they care about playing something new or if they want to return to a previous game and set of characters. If enough folks are interested that's what gets run and played.

I think the GM selecting the game makes the most sense to me because the GM needs to at least be comfortable with the system and enthused about the setting. I admit I may be biased about this since I am, more often than not, the GM.

We change settings and systems when there is a desire to try something new or when enthusiasm for the current campaign has waned. Usually that is me driving the change to play something else for a while. We try to find a reasonable end spot for the current characters before we switch. I think of the campaigns much like a series of novels. They are something that always has the potential of being revisited - like a new novel written in a familiar series.

Quote from: Blusponge;848866So it's pretty much like anything else these days, with kids, family, job, commitments.  You have to weigh the pros and cons of investing the time and effort into learning a new system.  If the pros outweigh the cons, well there you go.

Exactly. We play multi-year campaigns, so it may be worth switching to a new system if it does something different and interesting than the old system. I'm perfectly capable of adapting existing material to a system I like. I'll shamelessly appropriate ideas or even whole adventures and convert them to a system I like.

• I switched from OD&D and D&D clone games to Runequest because the rules did something different that I found interesting and because I thought the Glorantha setting was cool.

• I added in Call of Cthulhu because the systems are very similar so rules wise the change is pretty easy and because we wanted to play something different and because quirky 1920s characters are fun.

• I switched to Star Trek because someone else wanted to run it and I like the shows. After a while I started running Star Trek as well. (We alternated Star Trek with Call of Cthulhu, in part because it makes a nice break, in part because we have a stable of characters we really like, and in part because it is my wife's favorite game.)

• I switched to Star Wars after I got tired of running Star Trek and wanted a change. The WEG D6 system is nearly perfect for running original series Rebels vs Imperials or Fringe smugglers and such. (And we continued to alternate Call of Cthulhu with Star Wars.)

• I switched to Honor+Intrigue because our Star Wars campaign had finally gotten to the point where we had a couple of characters who had become fairly powerful Jedi and the lightsaber dueling rules just didn't result in the sort of interesting battles seen in any of the movies - well that's not quite true, you could easily get a duel like that between Vader and Kenobi in A New Hope, but honestly how much fun is that for Kenobi's player and even if it is, it's a one trick pony. So I looked at Honor+Intrigue in search of a dueling system that might work for Star Wars. I liked what I saw, but decided it would be fun to run something in a Three Musketeers kind of setting. Thus the current campaign.

I'm sure someone will prevail on me to run Call of Cthulhu again. Which will occur in parallel with H+I...unless we sign up for the commitment to play a Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;848609What do you do? What do the great GMs you know do?

Great GMs just know what their limits are, is all. And crap GMs don't know what game mechanics are, to know which one is good.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;848609What do you do?

Like all great GMs, I use whichever approach I like:D.
Sometimes that means adapting, sometimes it means using the system.

QuoteWhat do the great GMs you know do?

All of them do whatever they like;).