One of my players is a great cook, so I usually leave the catering to her.
As for giving out a hand to players when the group is having some sort of trouble, I usually try to differentiate between in-game and meta-game issues when deciding my next move.
In-game issues, meaning those that relate to the twists and turns taken by the story and the willful decisions of the characters, those I very rarely intervene with and only if I detect the game is heading into an undesirable scenario in terms of fun, such as the story going completely out of track or blocking a player from fully participating. This means that the decisions taken by the characters, as foolish as they may be, stand and get resolved as is. My players know that I'm very flexible when it comes to creative solutions, though, so they usually manage to find a way to solve things out on their own and I get pleasantly surprised.
Meta-game issues, now those are a different matter. These I see coming from the player not having a full grasp of the rules, story, setting, or mood of the game; perhaps someone missinterpreted an ambiguous description or had problems recalling a key event from several sessions ago. It can also relate to a problem on my end, such as failing to properly explain something, making a ruling mistake or forgetting an important detail. In cases like this I tend to be lenient and I will intervene the story and give out a hand if necessary, though trying my best to keep it consistent.
We do have a helping hand/running joke in the group, though, which is the Dungeon Master from the D&D cartoon. He shows up on rare occassions when the party has managed to get itself stuck with almost no hopes of recovery, generally due to meta-game issues. He's always extremely criptic about his advice, but has helped steer things back into a satisfactory game. He once showed up in a Star Wars d6 game, too.
It was a subtle (or not) reference to how you exploded all rude at me because you assumed I was like your bad GM. Clearly you were painting all GMs who liked having a story with the same bad experience you had as a player with that one GM.I've not let the incompetence of my previous DM affect my current run as DM, at all.Also, letting bad experiences from the past cloud your judgement is one of the worst things to do when you are DM.I am sure Icyshadow that by now you also know that it is one of the worst things you can do as a player too. In fact letting bad experiences from the past cloud your judgement is bad in ALL areas of life, even outside of gaming.
I'm a GM who likes having a story, so I have no idea what you are talking about.
Also, how freaking immature are you? Seriously, holding a grudge on me "because I was rude" to someone who blamed me at first?I think the worst part is that you misjudged me as a fellow GM and as a player. Trying to stealth troll me earlier is a minor offense in comparison.
Anyway, my Kingmaker group has been having fun so far with the whole run, enough that I need to run it twice per weekend instead of the usual one day. They said the reason for this is because it's been that much fun as me being the GM, which is a funny contrast to the above accusations. Not really sure if any catering has been involved, though. I've had no problems leaving most encounters in the book unchanged, though I did add a few things here and there once the group got to Rivers Run Red. Too bad I had to get sick in the weekend, cancelling the games from yesterday and the day before...