Quote from: Theory of Games on February 04, 2025, 07:03:47 PMWe can't all be Matt Mercer.

Good. He sucks, he's a grifter, and a fraud. I can confidently say I'm a better DM than him.

Quote from: Theory of Games on February 05, 2025, 09:46:07 PMI used to kinda not believe bad GMs were a thing. Like, they were Bigfoot or something. Myth mostly.

But then I saw that Adam Koebel rpg session livestream where his NPC graped a female player's PC.

Listen to some of Colvilles DM tales and you quickly realize he is a really bad DM who is really good at making all his horrid DM practices seem like the best thing ever.

Quote from: D-ko on February 06, 2025, 03:28:38 AMI worry that the x-card while good-intentioned, actually produces incentive to see how far people can toe the line and steers games in strange direction from the start.

People in the community are starting to "officially" push back against the X-Card as it can be used to censor an entire group to the advantage of the "offended" player. Pundit made a vid on "safety tools" at least thrice(?)

X-Cards never made any real sense, unless you watch the world through Woke-Goggles (which is insanity).

Quote from: blackstone on February 06, 2025, 01:16:24 PM

Quote from: Theory of Games on February 04, 2025, 07:03:47 PMWe can't all be Matt Mercer.

Good. He sucks, he's a grifter, and a fraud. I can confidently say I'm a better DM than him.

Agreed. But, he can be funny so I give him a little space.

Quote from: Omega on February 06, 2025, 03:19:15 PM

Quote from: Theory of Games on February 05, 2025, 09:46:07 PMI used to kinda not believe bad GMs were a thing. Like, they were Bigfoot or something. Myth mostly.

But then I saw that Adam Koebel rpg session livestream where his NPC graped a female player's PC.

Listen to some of Colvilles DM tales and you quickly realize he is a really bad DM who is really good at making all his horrid DM practices seem like the best thing ever.

Colville ....

Quote from: Omega on February 06, 2025, 03:19:15 PM

Quote from: Theory of Games on February 05, 2025, 09:46:07 PMI used to kinda not believe bad GMs were a thing. Like, they were Bigfoot or something. Myth mostly.

But then I saw that Adam Koebel rpg session livestream where his NPC graped a female player's PC.

Listen to some of Colvilles DM tales and you quickly realize he is a really bad DM who is really good at making all his horrid DM practices seem like the best thing ever.

I've never seen him GM anything. What makes him so bad?

TBF, I dont like his videos for the most part.

Quote from: Godsmonkey on February 07, 2025, 11:10:18 AM

Quote from: Omega on February 06, 2025, 03:19:15 PM

Quote from: Theory of Games on February 05, 2025, 09:46:07 PMI used to kinda not believe bad GMs were a thing. Like, they were Bigfoot or something. Myth mostly.

But then I saw that Adam Koebel rpg session livestream where his NPC graped a female player's PC.

Listen to some of Colvilles DM tales and you quickly realize he is a really bad DM who is really good at making all his horrid DM practices seem like the best thing ever.

I've never seen him GM anything. What makes him so bad?

TBF, I dont like his videos for the most part.

He had a campaign he was running on his alt channel that was a riff on "The Black Company" called "The Chain of Acheron."   I wasn't particularly impressed with it.

There is a really wide gulf between: "I know what kind of campaigns I want to run. I know how to do that.  I do them pretty darn well."  Versus, "I'm a really great GM who can run anything. I've mastered the full suite of skills that any GM could possibly ever want."

I'm the first.  I'm never going to even approach the second, because--besides the obvious immense talent and effort involved (yeah, we'll just skip right past that)--there are whole sections of kinds of campaigns and games and options that interest me not at all.

A big part of the average GM's competence or lack thereof is playing to his strengths. Then the next part of it is examining his weaknesses and dividing those into something that matters to his game, and thus need to be improved or at least minimized, versus those that don't really matter all that much.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on February 07, 2025, 03:49:36 PMA big part of the average GM's competence or lack thereof is playing to his strengths. Then the next part of it is examining his weaknesses and dividing those into something that matters to his game, and thus need to be improved or at least minimized, versus those that don't really matter all that much.

I think this is a really great point, I know most DMs don't really work to shore up their weaknesses beyond their initial year or two of learning to run the game (myself included), you just kind of accept what you're good at and lean into that and don't really work on the rest. There's a very real thing with DMs that because this is meant to be a leisure activity, I think we are more than willing to accept "good enough" and be happy to coast on that for the rest of the time.

Quote from: BadApple on February 07, 2025, 01:21:25 PM

Quote from: Godsmonkey on February 07, 2025, 11:10:18 AM

Quote from: Omega on February 06, 2025, 03:19:15 PM

Quote from: Theory of Games on February 05, 2025, 09:46:07 PMI used to kinda not believe bad GMs were a thing. Like, they were Bigfoot or something. Myth mostly.

But then I saw that Adam Koebel rpg session livestream where his NPC graped a female player's PC.

Listen to some of Colvilles DM tales and you quickly realize he is a really bad DM who is really good at making all his horrid DM practices seem like the best thing ever.

I've never seen him GM anything. What makes him so bad?

TBF, I dont like his videos for the most part.

He had a campaign he was running on his alt channel that was a riff on "The Black Company" called "The Chain of Acheron."   I wasn't particularly impressed with it.

If you dont mind elaborating, what was wrong with it. I heard part kf it back when youtube autoplayed it. It was background noise while i was working on some coding project so i dont even remmeber it.

Quote from: Slambo on February 07, 2025, 05:35:25 PM

Quote from: BadApple on February 07, 2025, 01:21:25 PM

Quote from: Godsmonkey on February 07, 2025, 11:10:18 AM

Quote from: Omega on February 06, 2025, 03:19:15 PM

Quote from: Theory of Games on February 05, 2025, 09:46:07 PMI used to kinda not believe bad GMs were a thing. Like, they were Bigfoot or something. Myth mostly.

But then I saw that Adam Koebel rpg session livestream where his NPC graped a female player's PC.

Listen to some of Colvilles DM tales and you quickly realize he is a really bad DM who is really good at making all his horrid DM practices seem like the best thing ever.

I've never seen him GM anything. What makes him so bad?

TBF, I dont like his videos for the most part.

He had a campaign he was running on his alt channel that was a riff on "The Black Company" called "The Chain of Acheron."   I wasn't particularly impressed with it.

If you dont mind elaborating, what was wrong with it. I heard part kf it back when youtube autoplayed it. It was background noise while i was working on some coding project so i dont even remmeber it.

IMO, the two biggest issues were that he was trying too hard to create great scenes rather than run a good game and that he was trying to spin too many plates right from the beginning rather than letting his players grow into the role.  It was clear to me that his expectations of the game and the understanding of the players were on two very different levels.

It felt more like a guy that spent way more time thinking about running a game over the years than like someone that was really an experienced GM.  All in all, not a bad game but not nearly up to the level he built it up to be.  I played better campaigns when I was in the Navy.