I have been GMing since forever and the few opportunities that I have to play I have a hard time being a player for some reason. Does anyone else feel like this?

Nope. I am the GM most of the time, but I love getting the chance to be a player! In fact I`m really itching to try out a few character concepts right now!

I love being a player (*giggle*), but I rarely get the chance...

Mostly because nobody else wants to take on the role of the GM.

I was the GM for my group of friends for maby 5-6 years from the age of 8-14, and only once did I get to be a player.

And it did not end well... Apparantly my players felt they needed to have "revenge" for all the times I had "screwed them over" (rather, just had some bad rolls on their part or good rolls on my part, since I never faked a roll just to let the players succeed).

So for the entire session, I failed every roll (all made in secret, of course) and anything I tried was horrendously failed, while everything (and I mean everything) that the other players tried succeeded flawlessly.

Of course, having your players succeed flawlessly at anything, no matter how ridiculous, in a session gets pretty boring, so they actually asked me to be the GM again next time.


I have been able to actually play as a player at conventions and the like, and I love it.
Truth be told, I'd much rather play than GM.

It always seems odd to me when I hear about one person having to GM all the time. It's completely the opposite of what I'm used to. In our group, everyone has to GM once in a while. Once an arc is over, GM swap, one char goes on vacation or is pack mule, old GM joins with his char. We've been running games like this for a long time now and never had a problem with it after we banned alcohol from the gaming table (but that was for other reasons ).

I tend to be the de facto GM of my group but I do enjoy playing on the rare occasions I get the chance.

I love to play but...

1) No one else wants to GM full time and put time into making good adventures

2) No one will commit to actually knowing the rules and therefore can't build a balanced adventure

And most importantly

3) everyone else GMs as if it's GM v player, not to tell their story.

I take pride in the fact that I constantly read up on new techniques and styles to keep the game from going stale. I don't make ridiculous challenges that change on the fly when I see heroes breeze through them. These are philosophy thing that the other players in my group don't get, and when called out they tell me about how it's just not a priority to read rules, or get technique advise.

I never get to PC.

(Check that, I PC in a Dresden Files FATE game that the end scene is on hiatus because the GM had a kid, but it was about to end in a session or two anyway.)

I've PC'd few times in the past 10 years (other than one shots at Cons) because, as many have pointed out, there are so few GMs willing to put in the same time and effort to make good stories. Prior to the Dresden game, the last time I PC'd was when one of my PC's elected to gift me by running the Saga-Edition Dawn of Defiance campaign for me and 3 other PC's. We never finished the whole arc, but it was GREAT fun.

These days, it's so hard for my generation (the 30-40 crowd) to squeeze in games between work, family, and social obligations. Everyone wants to play in my games that they devote time for that.

Or maybe I just run so many games that no one has time to run something for me. Hmmm...

We split the GMing duty about half and half - and I enjoy them both. I like not having to think and just enjoy the ride and I love being creative and coming up with crazy stuff to throw at my players.

I actually don't really like playing unless it is online or a video game. I've GM'd so long I get bored with only one part to play. I love the planning aspect of the game and playing the various roles and my players seem to keep coming back in every iteration of the game. I still have one player who started with me in 1994 when we picked up 2ed WEG (and on occasion another player from that game but RL keeps him committed to other things). The rest of my group has been around since the first WoTC game... as an aside the first game I ran was a TSR Marvel Super Heroes game for my brother followed the next week by my first Robotech game (i was the oldest of my friends and family so I defaulted to GM and haven't really stopped). I have enjoyed playing a few times now and then, but GMing keeps me at the table

Welp, that's three problems I see crop up quite a bit. Lemme see if maybe I can help?

I love to play but...
1) No one else wants to GM full time and put time into making good adventures

They don't have to GM full time. Let them fill in for a session or two. The occassional short interlude between story arcs or a series of short stories can be just as entertaining as a lengthy plot. You can still be the main story guy, but there's no reason people can't fill in and give you a break from time to time.

2) No one will commit to actually knowing the rules and therefore can't build a balanced adventure

I'll address the bit about knowing the rules first. Neither knowing the rules or GMing is particularily hard in itself. Combined, things can get iffy. I make gut decisions and improvise a lot myself, because I can't be bothered to look something up in the thick of things. So, you know your players can't be bothered knowing the rulebook back to back. That's fine. Try a shorter, lighter ruleset for their stuff. Let them get used to GMing an easy game first. With enough practise comes more confidence, and eventually they'll learn the do's and don'ts. And they're doing it in a contained space of their own campaign that won't horribly kill everyone else by accident.

As far as balanced adventures go, I'm not entirely sure what you mean by that. Could you clarify?

3) everyone else GMs as if it's GM v player, not to tell their story.

That is not necessarily a bad thing. It can be very entertaining as an interlude to make throwaway characters in roles that have a high casualty rate (in SW, say, stormtroopers or TIE pilots) and go on hellish missions. Someone dies? No problem, swap into the next trooper. Everyone's dead? No big deal, it was just an evening for laughs. They'll eventually outgrow this, too. It's a phase a lot of GMs go through. Eventually, you stop getting high off your own godlike power over the game and mellow out and think in different terms. But if you never get to GM, well, you never actually learn, grow and move past the "LOLTPK!". If you want to play, give your friends some positive encouragement, and play throwaway characters for a bit until they get a different mindset. GMs well, tendentially, get steadily more ambitious in their storytelling and eventually want to try for a longer arc.

Lately I've had a healthy dose of playing. But for the longest time I was the forever GM. I love both, but when I go a while without running a game, I get antsy. Unfortunately, I hate planning a game. I put a lot of pressure on myself and I procrastinate like crazy. But once I'm behind the screen and the dice start to roll, it doesn't matter. I really enjoy taking the players through a story.

I count myself very lucky that I've got a Skype group with plenty of folks that want to GM, be it for this system or other systems such as FATE or Mutants & Masterminds.

I actually enjoy being a player as much as being a GM. While as the GM I've got a little more control over what happens in a session, as a player there's more of an element of wonder as I don't know what's going to come next.

While i rarely get to play, when i do, i try to help out the GM as much as possible by offering suggestions for interesting threat and despair results. At least for this system, I get excited about telling a story, and if i think up an interesting despair result, even if it affects me, I'll put it forth.

While I like the idea of being a player, I don't feel as fulfilled unless I'm GMing- I get a kick out of creating a story and background characters and watching my players navigate the adventures while exploring their character's personal stories.

When I do play, I often feel like I could be doing "more" and end up putting more effort into creating "props" and background stories for my characters, drawing a portrait and getting really into my portrayal, still- it feels like there's something missing.

It probably doesn't help that the other GMs don't seem to want to tell an ongoing story; one of them has "gamer ADD" and switches games ALL the time. The longest running game I can remember him GMing was three sessions, the usual is two.

Another GM doesn't have a lot of confidence in his abilities as a storyteller and never feels like he has the rules down in any system he runs. He's admitted to having little desire to read the rules and typically relies on running games that have been played by the group before and goes off of memory.

So, it usually fall on my shoulders to run games and as I said, I love the idea of being a player, but I get my greatest enjoyment from GMing. Maybe I'm a control freak?

Really, really, want to PC. Always GM.

My group is family. I'm the one that gets the games going. The games won't happen unless I take the reins. I keep hoping for a group I can join as a player but there are so many hurdles - location, schedule, incompatibility of personalities, it quickly falls apart, etc.

I put a lot of pressure on myself and I procrastinate like crazy.

I love planning games, but I'm in the same boat - I put the actual planning off until the last possible moment. I've got this great idea that really needs a flow chart to plan for (the players can go off in so many directions that it might as well be a sandbox game), but I'm still at the concept stage and will probably be so until next Friday night.

I’ve GM’ed for a few games, but I’m not really good at it. I’m much better as a player.

However, with this game I have found that I’m enjoying helping the GM tell cool stories, and so I’m coming up with some ideas for things that I send his way, and who knows what might happen in the future.

I’ve also offered to do some GM’ing, if nothing else to give me a chance to test out some of the stuff we’re working on for the Rancor Publishing Group.

We split the GMing duty about half and half - and I enjoy them both. I like not having to think and just enjoy the ride and I love being creative and coming up with crazy stuff to throw at my players.

i'm the other half of Desslok's GMing tag team. I think we both really enjoy GMing, but also like our turn as a player. We have different strengths and story elements we emphasis as GM's, which gives the players some different flavors when we swap. It also gives us time to flesh out our ideas and story arcs before our turn comes again.

If you held a gun to my head and told me I had to choose to be either a player or a GM for the rest of my life I would probably choose player, but I'd miss the GMing. Every once in a while some story idea pops in to the brain and it just must be turned into a game. I'd miss having that outlet.

I've been very fortunate in this (until lately). We had a group of three couples and all of the guys took turns trading off as GM. We all had our weaknesses, but we all enjoyed the process of creating worlds and putting characters in harm's way. One of the campaigns in that group went the better part of 9 years and we never finished it, life just intervened...

Actually, I enjoy playing the role of a single character more than I do trying to orchestrate everything, but you play the cards you are dealt for the hand you are currently playing. Not saying I don't enjoy the world building aspects of GMing, but I'm not the control fanatic that has to handle every little detail. I think this is one of the reasons I was drawn to the FFG System so much was the narrative and combined aspects of it. I have a long rich history of D&D (which includes way too much Goblin Squad... aka Pathfinder) from my Red and Blue Box set through 5th. I have spent hundreds of hours playing in Classic World of Darkness (which includes the 9 year campaign) and I don't even want to think of the time pouring through PDFs and hardbacks. I have loved too many versions of Shadowrun... alone... I bought WEG and thought it was very cool but had no one to play with, so never really knew how it was.

In the end, I've learned that I am a Story / Tales kind of Player / GM. I love rolling dice and I have a vast collection of all kinds. But that isn't what keeps me coming back. Its the collaborative storytelling in imaginative places. This Star Wars hits all my buttons and though I am only GMing currently, I'm having a blast even as I wish I could just play some too.

I put a lot of pressure on myself and I procrastinate like crazy.

I love planning games, but I'm in the same boat - I put the actual planning off until the last possible moment. I've got this great idea that really needs a flow chart to plan for (the players can go off in so many directions that it might as well be a sandbox game), but I'm still at the concept stage and will probably be so until next Friday night.

This is me too. Sometimes my work can be pretty slow and I can get some game design in then, but when it's busy (like it is now) I usually end up wanting to spend my free evenings relaxing and doing something mindless, like TV or a video game. I often find myself frantically typing up the game Saturday afternoon when people will be starting to show up at 5:00ish.

I wish I could play more, but I really want to play EotE. The only other GM in our group runs a fantasy campaign, that's gone on for over 10 years, with sometimes 6 months or even a year between sessions.

I love to play but...
1) No one else wants to GM full time and put time into making good adventures
2) No one will commit to actually knowing the rules and therefore can't build a balanced adventure
And most importantly
3) everyone else GMs as if it's GM v player, not to tell their story.

I take pride in the fact that I constantly read up on new techniques and styles to keep the game from going stale. I don't make ridiculous challenges that change on the fly when I see heroes breeze through them. These are philosophy thing that the other players in my group don't get, and when called out they tell me about how it's just not a priority to read rules, or get technique advise.

2 & 3 sound pretty familiar. Even when I'm not GMing, the other GM in our group (who does make great adventures, with amazing maps and art, and fun and interesting NPCs) relies on me for the rules. I wouldn't mind, if I actually liked those other rules but now that EotE has come along I have to bite my tongue. And his games are still very much GM vs player...if you don't specifically count your iron stakes or say what knot you used to tie up your horse, you'll soon discover that you should have...

I prefer being a player to GM, but I end up GMing a lot of the time, because I'm decent at it (largely because player fun is my priority...and I understand that gm vs players isn't usually fun) and I'm willing to do it. I prefer playing though because you can immerse yourself more in the story (you don't have to worry about all the little details) and you have fewer responsibilities, so it's relaxing as opposed to being a bit stressful. GMing is rewarding, but it's easy to get burned out on it, especially when GMing for multiple groups at the same time.

I was the GM for my group sort of by default, since I was the only one who knew the system and had the books. Now one of the players, who GMed for the group before I came along and accidentally overthrew him, has the books and knows the system. I'm looking forward to handing over the reins and trying things out from the other side of the GM screen.

I like both. I'm in a multi-GM campaign and we switch off regularly, which is the perfect arrangement for me.

I only get to play about 1 out of 4 campaigns.

I would love to play more, but the one skill I have in spades is "improv that looks like it's planned." For example, the FND game that I am currently getting ready for my fourth official session of (we had one minor session that was only about two hours) had about 4 hours of planning to be a WEG D6 game just to sketch out the big plot points. Spooky force monsters, crazy inquisitors that started life as a little sith cult that just didn't work for me, check and check LETS GO! Then I was convinced to try FFG's system like... two days before our first session. We spent a day translating the WEG characters to FFG, and suddenly I'm running a new system! The entire second session was born out of a reaction to a despair on a mechanics roll to fix their ship.

Not the direction I had planned, but ok... oh and everyone's schedule opened up sooner than expected so... INTO THE BREACH! And The only way this kind of Improv works is ... well I defined all the peices of the puzzle, and I had a starting point (Shadowport gets eaten by creeeepy space crabs) and an end point (Which I won't go into because I know at least one of my players frequents the forums as a lurker and comments to me about my posts, but suffice it to say, there may be more space crabs to come) and whatever happens in between as long as I can maintain a narrative thread is gravy. Honestly, the one guy I have played the greatest number of hours in RPGs with can't tell when I am off the cuff or working a plan.

Now, this skill has been honed after years of players either intuitively leaping from breadcrumb A to the end point, or making a hard left turn because they can. Seriously, one whole play session went from "going to the office to get a mission" to "Hey, instead of going in the front door, let's test building security and break into our offices!" But this improv skill means I can generate content at least three times faster than some of the planners. Hence my GM to player ratio.

Though two guys in my group are going to tag team an EotE game, so HUZZAH! I'mma be a cocky fighter pilot for hire! pewpew! pewpew! SWOOSH!