Top valid concerns about GNS

[J B Bell]

I'd like to chime in on this (finally, GNS discussion that is not either very boring {to me!}, nor too abstruse for me to feel comfortable commenting on).

GNS changed my life.  I had planned on having my first post here be an extended gush about what it did for me.  Now I think I'll be more sober about it.

I had, like others I have heard on here, mostly quit gaming.  I was running a game with non-gamers (a good first step) and once again feeling really frustrated even though my cleverness didn't seem to have diminished since my long-lamented Good Ol' Games of the 80s.  I didn't understand why facing the game filled me with such dread, I didn't understand why a group of very smart players didn't "get it", I didn't understand why I could barely tolerate even hanging out with most other gamers.

I read The Essays.  A few times.  They helped me analyze my whole gaming history, the conflicts I'd had with players and the impotent solutions I had tried to apply to them, the rules and worlds I had tweaked and tweaked, each change either not working or greatly increasing my workload, leading to GM Burnout.

Everything became much, much clearer.  I knew why I was unhappy.  I knew why even the great games I had run still left me feeling so worn out.  I knew why my then-current game had sand in its gears.

I unloaded about it all on my players, ditched the existing game completely, detailed world and all, and we started playing Sorcerer.  It hasn't been perfect, but it's just getting better, and most important I'm having fun.  More fun than I had when I was putting on performances that my old players still talk about, because I'm playing games the way I want to and I know how to advocate for what I want clearly (and I no longer use the GNS terminology to do this--it isn't necessary--but I never could have arrived at my own vocabulary without it).

I think this experience isn't too uncommon, and somewhat accounts for Ron's "cult" status.

--TQuid (J B Bell, having Clinton change the moniker)