My impression of Mr Wick was that he thought "good" writing and GMing were both defined by how much you could make the characters suffer. The more suffering, the better.
Not necessarily.
He was pretty proud of that L5R game he ran where he told everyone it was going to be about fighting Shadowlands on the Wall, and he got mad that one guy made a character who was optimized to fight the Shadowlands on the Wall. So had him go up against an Etiquette (I think) roll his Crab bruiser couldn't make, and to punish him for failing, made him sit out of the game. That character wasn't suffering, he wasn't doing anything, he was suffering way less than if he'd got to fight on the Wall.
But he sure did punish the player for having the gall to break the rules that existed only in Wick's head and he never told anyone about.
Edited by Huitzil37