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This is not a troll - I would genuinely like to know what people think.
They say that GMs are a rare breed, and of course there will be some people happy to GM whatever the circumstances.
Personally I feel that the effort/reward balance between playing and GMing has shifted so much towards playing that, much as I have enjoyed GMing in the past, I really just want to be a player now.
And I don't think any player in my group will take up the mantle of GM for long. It's too much work, too much responsibility, and not enough fun.
It seems to me that Paizo relies on a small army of unpaid GM altruists to deliver their product line in order to make the game, and their business, viable. Yet everything I have ever read in their products (including the Gamesmater's Guide) appears to be about making sure that the players are enjoying themselves without any consideration about what the GM is getting out of it. Indeed, I suspect that anything targeted particularly at improving the lot of GMs would fail to see publication on the basis that GMs are only 1/5th of the customer base.
It would be easy to say, of course, that if you don't enjoy GMing you shouldn't be doing it. Problem is, if enough people say that, there wont be enough GMs to go round for all the players that want to play.
So should Pathfinder be doing more to help GM enjoyment?
Richard
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You mean that between all those GM aid products (flip-mats, card packs, map folios), APs and modules that are the most GM-friendly adventures on the market, a campaign setting book line that gives you monthly sourcebooks, electronic tools (PRD, free PDFs) and these boards Paizo isn't GM-friendly?
Wow.
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I think it's up to the DM.
Some DMs like to use the stuff Paizo provides, some don't think it fits their style or methodology.
And I don't think any company can be completely "DM friendly" because there are so many different styles of play that you can't put out products that fit every style of play. And if you could you'd lose money -- you make money by selling 1000 of the same thing; if you sell 1 copy each of a 1000 things, you lose (see: so many D&D game worlds of the 90s).
I know that there are a couple things I do as DM that no product or service could help me with -- they're intrinsic to me and my style.
And I know tons of DMs who do tons of improv in their games (I don't do any, it seems). How does a company put out a product for that?
Though I see the point made in th OP, I think Paizo does very well.
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In what way? How can a system of mechanics make something more enjoyable for the arbiter of the mechanics?
Game Mastering is about telling stories, orchestrating events, playing a thousand roles (including those that don't make good PCs, like sniveling lackies and mob king pins and giant evil dragons), organizing parties, tracking and collating information, handing down decisions, ruling on interpretation, creating, creating, creating, and so much more.
Players don't play because the simple act of playing is fun just as we don't GM just because the simple act of GM'ing is fun. The reason a player or GM takes up that mantle is a personal goal. Players get to experience the unknown, see new things, do crazy stuff, create a history of their character, get powerful gear, slay impossible beasts. These are all cool things and I can understand why players like to be players. A player who likes to be a player won't find those same things in the life of a GM.
The GM must enjoy running the show and seek to provide entertaining stories to the players. It can get rough and tiring. How many things have we made, encounters or npcs or story lines, that are ignored or forgotten. You spend long periods of time working up the personality, motivation, plan of attack, and speech for the BBEG... and the players find a novel way to get in and kill him with lucky rolls before he gets to do a single neat attack or offer a single line of monologue? It can be rough to lose out on that (even if you do recycle it).
How many maps have to slaved over to have the players just skip that dungeon or breeze through it without really caring that the rooms are all correctly sized for troll barracks. Do they even notice that there are some giant sized cells in the prison and wonder why and how the orcs captured giants (great back story on this one guys... of course, now that I think about it, there was no way for the players to learn it... hmm... well, still, I enjoyed it)?
What about anything here is the system's fault though? How can any system make it more fun to make dungeons that are largely ignored? How can a system reward a GM for providing the players with a full day of adventure in foreign lands?
I am interested in this question. I'm not critical of your comments. Hell, I'd love to take a break and be a player again as well but my players just don't have the knack or time or interest to be the GM. Also, as the GM, I dont have to travel to someone else's house (though I still buy food and drinks which, really, I shouldn't, heh).
I think Paizo has done a lot of good for the GMs with the adventure paths. Other companies have done other neat things, like map packs and initiative tracking boards and battlemats and dice towers and so many smartphone/tablet apps.
The APs still take work to run and to customize to your group, but they are solid constructs of quality adventure material. They have done the mapping and the encounters and the NPCs. The minimum required is still the book keeping, but for those of us who struggle with making solid stories or who have had one too many major events or NPCs skipped by players who, obviously, have no idea what they did or how long that bridge trap took to invent and perfect (damn fly spell) and you certainly aren't going to berate them for it; it is their story after all.
Then again, I don't play other systems. Perhaps there are ideas from other systems that are worth considering. I know some have PCs contribute NPC and place designs. I know others make conflict more communal in management, or have rules that are easier to interpret, or don't rely too heavily on so much record keeping. I lack much experience in those systems, so I don't know.
Another question - can we get an official GM appreciation day?
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I think more responsibility for a GM's fun lies on the players. I do not think many players understand this.
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Paizo made me a GM. I was a player before, and I never touched GMing because I knew I don't have the time to write adventures, draw maps, produce player aids and put statblocks together.
Then I bought Burnt Offerings and I saw that I have all that done for me, so I can focus on running the story and having a great time. Now it's my 5th year of GMing and I love every minute of it.
I agree with Gorbacz.
I think Paizo does a lot to be GM friendly. Just the adventure paths themselves make my life as a GM 100x easier. I love coming up with my own campaigns, but as I get older and life gets more and more busy, I find I have less and less time to do so. The APs give me the majority of a story, as well as the main encounters, with little to no effort on my part. All I have to do is mix in my own flavor!
The GameMastery Guide has also been very helpful. The NPC Gallery is so handy when you need a quick stat block. It also offers lots of advice for many issue that come up as a GM. The messageboards on this website are filled with advice from other GMs.
I have played a lot of other RPGs in the past, and occasionally I go back to a few favorites just for variety. However, I always wind up wandering back to Pathfinder because it is just so much more convenient (and fun).
I'd say Paizo is GM friendly, but that whether I'm enjoying myself or not is far more tied to my players than the system.
I've enjoyed GMing some Pathfinder games, and I've hated others. It all depends on the players I'm running it for.
In what way? How can a system of mechanics make something more enjoyable for the arbiter of the mechanics?
I'll bite: I'm a bit of a hypocrite when it comes to playing and GMing.
As a player, I prefer a system where the GM does quite a bit of accounting. (e.g. "simulationist")
As a GM, I prefer a system where the GM doesn't have to do much accounting. (e.g. "narrativist")
I could get a bit into how much I'd prefer more RP opportunities in the AP's over yet another extended background write-up for an antagonist of which the PC's will never know why he was there ( beyond "to get beat up" ) or another bunch of "ineffective mooks" encounters.
But I guess I already ranted a lot on that topic in the last months. ^^
I can't think of a company which is more concerned with making things enjoyable for GMs. I think the system is tough on GMs (because it's big, complicated and there are billions of player options) but that's a function of the game-style really. If you like simulationist games, you're pretty much going to have to get used to complication.
What do you think they could do that they arent?
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A good GM gets to combine Drama, Linguistics, Geoscience, Theology, Philosophy, Anthropolgy, Architecture, Military tactics, Sociology, Literature, Medicine, Enginering, and History into one finished project. Who DOESN'T want to be a GM?
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Pathfinder for me provides more than any other game system save WoD. I agree with many posters above as well -GM's do it because they love it and that reaps its own reward.
It does raise the questions about what new things can be created to increase the GM resources..
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IMO Paizo is very GM friendly with their products. The AP's can use some work yeah (10 pages of fiction?), but they have very comprehensive maps and their adventures tend to flow well and present information in an easy to follow manner.
What they do the best for me, though, is give me Humanoid enemies with stats. The NPC gallery in the GMG is used by me more than the Bestiary (I tend to have more humanoid less monstroid enemy list), and not having to spend 30m per NPC to generate combat stats is a joy. Plus I can port those stats over to other base creatures for even more fun (ex: putting the Raider on a Xill for a nice 10ish CR creature).
They have also been taking more steps to make using their AP's with a VTT more accessible. In Carrion Crown, for instance, all the room labels were on a separate layer in the PDF, not on the map itself. That allows me to paste into Maptool without giving room numbers away (If only they would put secret doors elsewhere @_@). I just bought Skull & Shackles 1, and it comes with a 2nd pdf of just maps with a fun button to turn on and off labels and markers and grid; only problem is can't pull those images into Maptool by default like I can from the AP books.
Also, as Veiled Nail pointed out, the simple templates are just like the GMG NPC's, pop them on as needed. I need a CR4 zombie? Make it Giant, Advanced x2, Fiendish. There is my 2HD, glass cannon zombie.
One of the things that struck me immediately about reading through the Core Rulebook was the use of the term "rules adjudication" -- this sort of thing gets my "fox ears" up as a law/jurisprudence geek.
My reading of the Paizo materials is that GMs are meant to keep the storyline moving forward, have a GM fiat, and are backed in the rulebook with a sort of "nobody likes rules-lawyering, let the GM decide" tone.
The inclusion of Gamemastering chapters in the Core Rulebook lend themselves to a "every player /can/ be a GM" unlike other systems where there are three books (player guide, GM/DM guide, monster book) and players can "opt-out" of having GM materials.
In Pathfinder Society, I cringed when I saw how /many/ books and legal play items there were.. until I read that the /players/ were responsible for bringing the physical copies so that a GM only really needs the Core Rulebook and the Bestiary plus the module/scenario and game aids they wish to run.
Overall, I'm impressed that Paizo included those items in a rulebook that every participant will likely have -- I'm also impressed with the manner in which they've designed game aids that you /could/ purchase if you wished to make GMing easier but that are optional if you'd rather spend the time to make them yourself.
I can't say whether or not this actually makes the game more enjoyable, but I do know that Paizo has made some effort to make it far less annoying (and less expensive!) to GM in Pathfinder than other systems that I've played in the past.
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I can't say whether or not this actually makes the game more enjoyable, but I do know that Paizo has made some effort to make it far less annoying (and less expensive!) to GM in Pathfinder than other systems that I've played in the past.
Having all the aids and supplements in the world isn't what MAKES running a game fun for the GM, its what KEEPS the GM from getting burned out/frustrated/GM fatigued from having to do inordinate amounts of prep for the PC's to stand at the tavern all session. I have fun when I GM from the fact that I create a story, and have 4 players who have a vested interest in the story, and we have a good time hanging out and socializing around my story.
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I'm finding it pretty much impossible now as a GM to maintain narrative flow whilst getting the rules right and making on the fly corrections to problems within the modules.
Probably the first thing I would like to know is whether I'm trying to do the impossible.
If I'm not, then I would like to give as an example one encounter that we had last session, which was with a Huge Air Elemental.
Despite the fact that I spent some time acquainting myself with all the nuances of this thing, and all the nuances of "fly" so that we now mark flying creatures with the direction they last flew in so that we can properly calculate the costs of their turning-arounds, I still managed to forget that in whirlwind form it would only occupy a 5' square at its base, which would have affected the number of creatures it could sweep over to try pick up.
I also forgot that it could then drop them from a 50' height (assuming that I could *rule* that it could shift captives up there as a free action).
And had it not used Whirlwind form I would probably have forgotten that it had Mobility and that it could use Acrobatics to avoid AoOs.
Oh, and I definitely *did* forget about the flying cloud of debris.
And since this thing was picking characters up and throwing them in a river I also had to know about falling damage into water (rules which the module writer actually got wrong) and all the rules on swimming, plus figuring out how much damage takes place when you go over a waterfall (no guidelines in the module), and what to do if the character has a ring of featherfall (which he did), and how to handle failed swim checks at the bottom of the waterfall (again, no guidance).
Too many rules.
The module itself is also somewhat flawed in narrative terms (I expect some of you might have guessed which one it is by now) since the party can arrive there on friendly terms, so to speak, and the whole place is full of *treasure* which actually belongs to the owner so they'd effectively be stealing, and since they're basically a good party of course they're not taking any of it.
Additionally, about half of this area could be skipped out completely by a flying party, or even one which gets across to the other side of the river and then drops down on a rope.
It's these sorts of things that make GMing a headache (for me, at least, but, like I said, maybe I'm trying to do the impossible).
As for what can be done:
Certainly, help with the rules. Maybe they've got so complicated now that it's just not possible for one person to manage alone and we have to rethink the rules-side of the game into something which is more like a co-operative venture between GM and players, with equal responsibility all round.
The paizo modules, although they read well and tell a good story, need to be checked more for rules-correctness, logic and playability. I mean I cringed when I read the next module in the series and discovered an investigative scenario where the guilty party is evil and nobody else is (and, yes, there is a paladin in the party, and the party has discovered that if you simply kill the evil guy you will always the evidence you need later on when you go through his possessions).
And I think the rules as a whole need work as well. These forums are full of cases where people are having to house rule stuff that doesn't make sense. All of that needs ironing out and clearing up.
Richard
Perhaps Pathfinder isn't the ruleset for you.cop-out
I am not so sure. I used to be a huge Hero fan. Now I find I would rather get on with the story than worry over rules minutia, so rules light systems have become more appealing.
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Richard, I can understand your complaints. Those are some troublesome problems with the complexity of the PF ruleset. It's really a fundamental issue with the whole 3.x rule system's design. I do think dealing with stuff like that gets easier the more experience you have.
But here's my advice for you right now:
Think about what you'd like Paizo to do to make your job easier, and see if you can just do those things yourself. I'll bet it'll be easier than you realize.
What I mean is: Don't worry so much about getting things right. Just concentrate on making sure you and your players are having a good time.
Try thinking of the rules as tools. Each rule is a designer saying, "Here's a good way of mechanically expressing what happens in this situation." You might want to express it in some other way, though.
Can the air elemental suck characters 50 feet into the air? It's up to you. Would it be more fun if the answer was yes, or no? You decide.
How much damage does falling into the water do? Well, if the core rulebook says one thing and the AP says another, just use whatever one is easier for you. What about the waterfall? I dunno, how about 4d6 with a Fort save for half? Sound good?
Is there something poorly written in the AP's plot? Make up your own solution.
To me, being able to adapt and simplify things is the mark of a good GM. And I think it's easier than most people realize. I think if you can discover how to use the rules as tools, be inventive in improving the story, and -- most importantly -- just relax, not only will you enjoy GMing a lot more, but your players will enjoy playing more, too.
And that means everybody wins.
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...stuff..about an Air Elemental and WhirlwindWell, this does give me an idea for a new set of GameMastery Cards:
Universal Monster Rules
It looks like there already is a product like this out there, for super cheap:
http://paizo.com/products/btpy8ffb?GMs-Aid-IX-Universal-Monster-Rules-and-S imple-Template-Cards
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It sounds like you don't enjoy the Pathfinder rules themselves. There are many different rules that you can use. If you want something that is more streamlined and less rules intensive you should pick up a copy of Savage Worlds. There are many products available for it. There are campaign settings and add on books as well.
For me, however, I use savage worlds when we are playing a quick session or breaking away from Pathfinder as a breather. Overall my players enjoy the rules intensive play. If we don't know how a certain mechanic works, we, as a group, let the GM decide on what quick-rule we can use to streamline play without being too bogged down in that situation. Then we look up that specific rule during (as long as it's a player and it isn't taking away from their actions) or after the session. No matter what game you play there are always new situations which you aren't going to be prepared for. No matter what game you play. That's why GM Fiat is so important! Some people want more rules on those specific play. Other people are happy to wave their wand of "I believe" and just go with how they feel it should work out.
Now, though the modules are sometimes erroneous, almost everything is. Take it with a grain of salt. Errors are pervasive in every part of life. You obviously learned the "rules." But again, rules don't matter. It's a roleplaying game. You could choose to have no rules and just role play characters, but that's not that exciting.
Since PF doesn't have 50+ books, like other games, it actually makes it easier as a GM. The more books, the more rules, the harder it is to keep track of everything. It's up to you as an individual to determine if the product makes you happy. If it doesn't, do something else. No one forces you to do it. No one forces me to do it. Is it hell sometimes? Yes. Annoying other times? Yes. Why do it? Because I love doing it. It's a matter of taste.
It sounds like you don't enjoy the Pathfinder rules themselves.
To me, it sounds like he enjoys them as a player more than he enjoys them as a GM. That's basically how I feel, anyways.
So here is what we must keep in mind. D&D, and thus Pathfinder, is a combat simulation system. It is not a narrative system. It is meant to adequately model reality in a consistent and balanced way to ensure a predictive means for use. That means lots and lots of rules for all kinds of situations.
I'm with you Richard, in that I hate house ruling on the fly if I know there is a real rule out there. I want to give the system the full right to be used without shortcuts or guess work. I hate just winging it.
That said, you still run your game in a closed box. There is no global oversight, no concern that other GMs must agree with your interpretation. You get the fiat and can do whatever you want with it. If you want less rules, abolish the rules. Can a wind elemental pick something up as a free action? Well, can it? Players may argue (mine do, and I do when I'm a player), but it really is your choice. They also won't argue when you reduce creature ability by just not doing things. Forget about mobility? Oh well, is it really that bad a deal?
There are a lot of rules and they aren't perfect. They could do a sweep and still miss things. They could do a dozen and make problems. Then there are the willful and accidental misunderstandings. Even happens with the designers. You'll never have a perfect system in that regard.
You can run pathfinder without dice at all, but then why would you? It is a combat simulator. Want a narrative system? Play burning wheel or white wolf systems.
As for the APs, ok, fine, what about the castle? So players find treasure? Ok, how does it hurt that they are good guys and don't take it? You are the GM and you either ignore wealth-at-level chart or you work out a way to play catchup. Players won't know.
Players skip half the place? Fine, that's ok, you didn't waste time making all those maps and encounters, so that's just how it is. You can even give them the lost XP for overcoming the encounters through mitigation instead of combat! Heck, you can give them XP for showing up to the game, for that matter.
APs are not perfect, but they sure take a lot off of the GM in terms of prep and creative time.
It sounds like you don't enjoy the Pathfinder rules themselves.To me, it sounds like he enjoys them as a player more than he enjoys them as a GM. That's basically how I feel, anyways.
This is a reoccurring theme I have been hearing lately.
You know, there could nearly always be more tools to make running a game easier. A good character builder that includes all the rules, a few simplifying structures for making/modifying monsters, etc.
But I still feel that Paizo has been very GM friendly with what they've been doing. I have especially liked the sidebars in adventures describing a little bit of the design intent behind specific encounters or events. For example, there's a really good one in Burnt Offerings that explains how a particular encounter location gives a particular class (if present in the PC party) a chance to shine in an atypical way. It really inspired me and helped convince me that sending Paizo my money was well justified by the quality of and thought going into the product.
Early modules in the Gamemastery line did a fair amount of this also. I'd like to see even more of it as long as it doesn't displace too much important content. But then, I always loved to read the designer notes in my war games too.
There are many factors to how enjoyable I find a game when running it. Pathfinder rates very well on some of those factors in my book, and very poorly on others.
The adventure paths and modules are very well-written and offer good, immersive storytelling opportunities for both myself and my players.
The ruleset is another issue entirely, and that's largely because backward compatibility was such a key component of core design principles.
D&D 3.5 is NOT a GM-friendly system; the best example of this I can give is that it assumes that GMs should take as much time to make ONE NPC as a player does to make their entire character in order to make math work out properly when formulating encounters. This is, frankly, dumb beyond belief. Pathfinder continues this tradition, which makes it very hard to design your own monsters from scratch and know that they aren't over- or under-powered in execution. For all my complaints about 4E, they got the quick-and-easy monster building method down pat.
If I could ask for one thing from Paizo to make my life as a GM easier, it would be to create a cheat sheet method (one more elegant than the average stats by CR chart found in the core rules) akin to 4E's monster building guidelines to make it easier for me to formulate monsters on the fly - or at least, not to have to spend upwards of 30 minutes on a single build to feel like I've gotten the formula right.
The second thing I'd ask for is to break away from the sacred cows of 3.5 in any future edition of the game. Backwards compatibility be damned; streamline what is bloated and fix what is broken.
The upshot of all this, though, is that the APs do a lot of that work for me, which is why I like running them. I can dedicate time to making one or two special NPCs per AP chapter and know that the rest of the stat blocks are all done for me right there in the text, or in a paginated reference to a rulebook.
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What do you think they could do that they arent?
An explanation of the tactics of every monster in the Bestiaries. Some monsters, especially higher level ones, have a tonne of abilities and feats which many GMs may not understand the interaction between.
This would make it easier on GMs. Personally, this isn't a huge issue for me as I don't drop 'random' monsters into games (and I don't run games past 12th Level) and I also get acquainted with them while writing adventures (not that I haven't made mistakes, such as missing the 'reach' on a faceless stalker I ran). Other GMs I have played under have dropped random encounters as well as major seemingly planned battles in which the monsters did not play to their own strength (pouncers fighting in difficult terrain nullifying their pounce being the most recent example).
Overall, though, paizo does a good job of making it easy on the DM (the PRD is invaluable to how I run games); the system itself demands a lot from the DM, but everyone should already know that from 3.X.
Hey, I'd buy a "Big Book of Monster Tactics" from Paizo.
I think GMing is most about story telling, so if you enjoy to create and narrate stories then you will find DMing quite enjoyable depiste the easy or hard task that could be.
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I think that people are right when they talk, generally, about those tangible and intangible rewards that you get from GMing - regardless of system. I've been GMing for decades now and I certainly buy into all of that.
I think the problem is that in its desire to produce a game beloved of players Pathfinder has introduced a number of barriers to enjoyment for the GMs.
And I think that there is a danger that unless this is recognised soon then even life-long die-hard GMers like myself will lose the will to carry on and maybe move to other systems or play MMORPGs or give up completely.
To pick up on one of the points made earlier, a big problem for GMS without encyclopaedic knowledge of the rules is that Pathfinder is very play-balance oriented.
This balance is carefully calculated between the various system components (classes, races, feats, etc), and in the encouter vs reward system of the game as a whole.
However this balance only works if the GM is meticulous about delivering the complete unadulterated rule set during play. Improvisation is dangerous, as it can easily disadvantage one player over another, or break the overall risk/reward level.
Players who have carefully constructed and optimised their characters will expect you to get the rules right so that all of their work makes sense, and that's become very difficult to GM now.
Perhaps controversially but I do also feel that Pathfinder has engendered a feeling that GMs are there to deliver a service to the players, but that players are not in any way responsible for ensuring that the GM enjoys his time at the gaming table too. I think that the relationship between players and GMs needs redefining. In a system where it's more fun to play than to GM, maybe it should become more accepted that the GM "hat" moves round the table, a bit like a dealer in game of cards, so that everyone has to take their turn. Rules decisions then become collaborative, and everyone shares the burden of their knowledge and application.
Richard
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This level of rules complexity exists since 2000 (year of 3E's introduction). Over 7 years of 3/3.5 lifespan, WotC pumped out a gajillion more rules than Paizo likely every will produce for Pathfinder.
Yet, there are enough GMs running and enjoying the game to keep the ruleset viable. This game isn't made for everyone, it's for both players and GMs who enjoy complexity and embrace a dazzling array of options.
I know people who will never touch anything related to 3ed D&D due to it's baroque landscape of options and rules. It's OK, it's not a game for everyone.
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I think more responsibility for a GM's fun lies on the players. I do not think many players understand this.
+1
How many of us have seen players that seem to go out their way to give the GM a hard time or b+$~$ about something he is doing they don't like . The GM could be running a kick ass/fun game and someone will b$$+! about one thing they don't like about it or nitpick a ruling they did not like.
In my personal experience, I find that the best way for a GM to enjoy the game is making sure the players are having fun. I know it sounds cheesy, but it's true.
When a group has a good GM and all (or at least, most) players are having fun, it's very likely that the GM is also having fun.
I've been GMing for a while now, and every week was the same thing, during week I had to create encounter/monsters/plots/scenarios/etc and I'd always think to myself "I wish I was playing this week..." and every weekend, I'd GM and my players would really enjoy the game, and as consequence, I'd have a blast too. It'd would take another 3~4 days for me to wish to be a player character again.
On the other hand, when the DM focus on his fun instead of the players', chances are noone, player or GM, is enjoying that game.
Paizo gave as APs and lots of other cool stuff to make GMing easier and more enjoyable. But in the end, it all comes down to the gaming group.
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My philosophy of GMing is simple: "Be the GM you wish you had."
Because it means that being a player might be fun, but you'll know that no game you are a player in will hold a candle to any game you run.
Paizo does a lot for GMs. Their core line of products is the Adventure Paths, the ultimate GM tool and enticement, because just reading them makes you want
to play them, but really could anyone execute the vision of a campaign as well as you could?
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The problem is I find it very difficult to be the GM I wish I had.
But returning to my original question, just in case anyone at Paizo might be interested in this discussion.
I would like to see products emphasising that the game is a collaboration between players and GM; the GM isn't some sort of Paizo employee paid to deliver the perfect game.
Let me quote from the first few paragraphs of the Core rule book:
"...players take on the roles of heroes who form a group (or party) to set out on dangerous adventures."
"If you are a Game Master ... Your job is to bring the setting to life ..."
"It is the Game Master’s duty to provide challenges for your character that are engaging, but not so deadly as to leave you with no hope of success."
So the players are there to have fun and the Game Master has a job and a duty!
The idea of collaboration is touched on later, though this seems to be more about telling the Game Master not to get too power-hungry.
"Although the Game Master is the final arbiter of the rules, the Pathfinder RPG is a shared experience, and all of the players should contribute their thoughts when the rules are in doubt."
Now, to be honest with you, I didn't have much of a problem with this in the past. The problem now is that the job and the duty have become much harder, not just because the rules are harder, but also because players have a much (much much) higher expectation.
Richard
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Perhaps you need to be frank w/ your players that you're not a Rules Lawyer and/or don't have your PFRPG PhD. They might believe you current are/do, and if you let them know you're not the grandmaster of the rules, they might be a bit more helpful or patient when a bad rules encounter pops up (and based on your first description, I'm assuming this bad encounter was the air elemental trap in Schloss Caromarc in CC book 2, one of the most PC death prone 1 sided encounters I've seen in an AP, for the party level).
Luckily, I have 2 players who also GM, and two more that have a fairly good grasp on the rules themself. When I flub on something or don't know the exact ruling, we work through it and all come out a bit better.
You touched on a point in your last post that the players have a higher expectation. I think its cause they've easier access to the rules than in the previous version (which was universally shared through pirated PDFs). That's the bad part about having so much available on the PRD and d20pfsrd. However, I think it can be mitigated if your players know what level of rules mastery you have upfront and if you ban website surfing / rulebook mining during session.
So here is what we must keep in mind. D&D, and thus Pathfinder, is a combat simulation system. It is not a narrative system. It is meant to adequately model reality in a consistent and balanced way to ensure a predictive means for use. That means lots and lots of rules for all kinds of situations.
I'm with you Richard, in that I hate house ruling on the fly if I know there is a real rule out there. I want to give the system the full right to be used without shortcuts or guess work. I hate just winging it.
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In Storyteller and other narrative focused games, it's an accepted fact that the GM is going to be "winging it" fairly often because that's an intended part of the design. I actually think that people have become more rigid in playing the rules in D20 and it's successors because the Internet puts up perceived errors under a huge magnifying glass.
I can't imagine a GM like you running Storyteller or Gods Forbid, Amber Diceless.
Heh, me either. Friend picked up Mouseguard. I don't have any idea of what to do with it or how to even begin to create a story for it. Where are my classes!? Where are the rules on moving during combat!?
I've played a number of systems, but only ever GM D&D/Pathfinder. I am a technical person, a software programmer, so I need logic and structure. I wing the hell out of the story, but I hate making up rules because I will just forget them.
Also, my groups always have a powergamer that will look to maximize his involvement with the game. I have to know the rules or they will do what they want to do (not maliciously, but lets just say there's a definite bias in how they interprets things)