I’m going to quickly summarize what I commented under Matt Colville’s video I think a potential framework is preference of narrative types, and preference for game mechanics. I mentioned a few archetypes that I’ve seen that seem to be pretty common.

I talk about the Tactician GM, who’s campaigns tend to be tests of skill and understanding of a given ruleset, think more dungeon crawls and mega dungeons. They tap into the wargame simulation roots of the hobby. The mechancial highlight system of this would be D&D or Pathfinder.

I also mention the Philosopher GM, who tends to focus on character’s beliefs and convictions and how they operate in a messy world, what they’re willing to sacrifice when push comes to shove. Think gamified trolley problems and philosophy 101. The mechanical highlight systems for this would be something akin Mage the Ascension/Awakening or Ars Magica.

And finally in my writeup, theres the Socialite GM, who specializes in the interpersonal dynamics and conflicts, think court politics, social maneuvering, or interpersonal melodrama. The mechanical highlight for this would be Vampire the Masquerade, especially any campaign focused heavily on Camarilla internal politics.

I think there may be a sort of parallel between this discussion of what is a GM’s style and the Adam Neely video about what makes musical genres distinct.

The Technocratic Union are the primary antagonists to the 9 Traditions. No so much purely evil for the sake of evil but a well funded highly authoritarian secret society ideologically opposed to the Traditions. The Technocracy brought us modern plumbing, vaccination and modern medicine, toilet paper, and nuclear weapons, advanced bioweapons, capitalism, and the prison industrial complex.

The Nephandi are the evil for evil sake mages. They are seeking to spread as much pain and misery and bring in the descent of humanity into destruction.

And then there’s the marauders, mages who’s magickal hubris gets the better of them and they succumb to a reality warping madness.

In my experience when I’ve been playing any system for a long time and my players say “hey do something different” they are almost always looking for something very different from what we are all playing. I’ve spent the most amount of time playing Mage the Ascension in my rpg career, eventually my current group was hey Mage is getting a bit stale, let’s do another game. So we did some Vampire the Masquerade, and it was too close in flavor to Mage. So we started playing some Pathfinder and that was the breath of fresh air we were looking for. Eventually we did switch back to mage, but one of my players decided to run their own campaign set in Star Wars which was a ton of fun.

So forgive me for using my own experience of when my players have asked to play something different my understanding is they are looking for something more drastic that going from one Tolkien inspired fantasy game to another Tolkien inspired fantasy game or from one modern Gothic punk game with magic to another modern Gothic punk game with fangs.

I’m getting tired of eating Mac and Cheese all the time “have you tried Caccio e Pepe?”

It’s still pasta and cheese.

If someone asked me for something other than dnd to play, I’d imagine they’re looking to get out of the tolkein flavored medieval fantasy genre into something different and recommend something like World of Darkness, modern supernatural urban fantasy for political intrigue and melodramatics, or Blades in the Dark, victorian industrial fantasy heists. Not “grittier Tolkien flavored medieval fantasy.”

Imo WoD I feel gets the right balance of RP and streamlined combat with optional additional rules if they are needed. I’m also generally a firm believer in combat means all other forms of diplomacy has failed. I also love that no matter how strong you are, everyone has 7 points of health they can take (but there are ways of getting around that especially for mages)

And for all the good and bad that the 5e splats that Paradox is putting out, the “3 rounds and call it” philosophy of combat is something I enjoy immensely.

In my eyes rolls basically need to be Yes Ands or Yes Buts.

Roll well: Yes And you figure out some extra information/figure it out quickly so you have advantage on your escape/you look impressive in front of the guards who did let you into the room

Roll poorly: Yes But you take a bit too long figuring it out, now guards are walking into the room/one of the guards escorting you into the room points something out to you making you look a unobservant/you accidentally break something and you’ve now left evidence you were here.

I’ve run 10 Candles a number of times and had an absolutely fantastic time every single time. It’s perfect for a horror one shot and character creation is built right into setting up the game. Definitely talk with the group beforehand whether you all want to play a more light hearted comedic horror or something scarier.

https://youtu.be/GfePLMYmA7k

I really like WoD’s Resources background, one thing I do tend to append to the rules is separate out recurring income from lump assets.

Basically Income Resources are used up and refresh each month worth of time provided players maintain their income or have retainers keep watch over the accounts. Lump Resources are like having a big pile of gold, or a big inheritance from an eccentric uncle or just a bunch of money in a savings account. Once they’re used up, they’re used up.

To use another IRL example, humans did drive the wooly mammoth to complete extinction with little more than sharpened rocks attached to sticks.

Humanity’s ability of cooperation is a massive force multiplier and let’s us accomplish tasks that would kill and individual.

At its core DnD is a wargame where we spend most of the game time fighting against monsters and bad guys. Having robust combat systems is the big draw of the game and fighting monsters in interesting ways without being too unfair either way. People want rules that are robust enough to make interesting combat but don’t completely break down under a bit of the box thinking, like the peasant rail gun, or the moon box lich, or the create water in someone’s lungs to cause drowning, or the coffeelock to get infinite spell slots.

All of these mechanical oversights are frustrating to play with because we have to stop the game and debate over whether this cheesy game breaking bullshit should be allowed at the table and it takes time away from the reason we’re all here, to get together play a game, and let everyone have fun, DM included. And sitting around debating whether the moon counts as a container for a lich’s soul reliquary or lining up 500 peasants and each of them readying and handing off an object at a bazillion mph for an hour and a half breaks the rules is not fun.

You want a system for magic that encourages being busted even at high levels? Play some Mage the Ascension, you can do some absurdly wacky shit even at fairly low power levels.

total and absolute belief in something

My Syndicate agent with an Adam Smith book and a wad lf cash THE POWER OF CAPITALISM COMPELLS YOU!

World of Darkness and other Storyteller/Storytelling system games call their GM the Storyteller, which I think is a good title for it.

As for why designers make up their own, the term Game Master is pretty generic, and kinda boring, and they want to create something unique and/or more flavorful to their games. The term “Dungeon Master” is also owned by Hasbro and also only really makes sense in more Tolkien inspired fantasy games where heroes are crawling their way through dungeons.

Because certain systems have different focuses.

The core game focus of DnD is pretty heavily directed toward combat. Most of the spells and skills your character has are for combat or for getting into combat or for between combat encounters. It’s a combat centric game, with some RP rules added on top for in-between combat encounters.

Compare that to World of Darkness’s Storyteller system, which is much more heavily focused on the social interactiom and narrative drama. Combat in that game is quick and usually quite lethal, and even in the 5th Edition games Paradox is releasing, calls for combat to be 3 turns before resolving the interaction.

It takes a lot of time and effort to add on your own rules to make these systems handle what they weren’t really designed for.

I wouldn’t really want to run a game of complex political intrigue in DnD just as I wouldn’t want to run a monster slaying dungeon crawl in World of Darkness.

ROCK AND STONE!

Yeah, gender being a social construct doesn’t mean everyone everywhere just suddenly becomes genderless androgynous blobs, we still express our gender in the ways we want to express them.

For example High heels, sheer leggings, long curly hair, and a flowy skirt and poofy blouse adorned with shiny bits. Am I describing the style dress of women today or the style of dress of 17th century French kings?

Certainly coffee houses do have historic basis in our own reality but the highly commercialized omnipresent franchises with extensive supply chains like IRL Starbucks would definitely be a bit more anachronistic, especially in an adveture friendly world where monsters and bandits are waiting outside the walls of the city waiting to ambush cargo shipments.

Something like that probably wouldn’t have been even remotely possible until the age of Mercantilism well after the medieval period gave way to the Renaissance and eventually the age of exploration.

Less about specifically hating Roll20, than the blatant engagement in anti-competetive practices and the monopolization of the industry in a push toward a vertically integrated monopoly.

Sort of like if Hasbro bought out the main book printer used by a bunch of TTRPGs so they have a vertical integration and can basically force all those other games to either deal with a hostile competitor to get books printed at unsustainable prices or completely upend a huge section of their development pipelines, try to find another printer, build that relationship, rework the pipeline and formatting guides so the printer actually can print the books. That’s a process that could take multiple years and millions of dollars to do. Both of which options would kill even large rpg studios.

As a DM dice are there to make noise behind the screen and raise tension. They’re a psychological tool as much as they are a randomizer.

Personally I play a lot of World of Darkness games, which runs on dice pools, so if I can just keep obviously adding more and more dice to a pool, recount once or twice and roll to really sell the illusion that they may be in for something a lot bigger and scarier than they are. Or just roll a handful of dice as moments are going on, give a facial reaction and let that simmer under the surface for a while.

This sounds a lot like Star Lord’s situation with Ego in Guardians of the Galaxy 2.

Do my eyes decieve me? An honest to god Mage the Ascension meme???