Now in my personal experience I have noticed that most people who GM (and are good at it) seem to find they are the the GM more and more often, until they are always the GM.

I know this happened to me. I was mostly a player for years. I had one especially good GM for a few years, and after he left I increasingly found myself GMing the games. At this point I don't think I have been a serious player (save for a few sessions) for six years or so.

I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing. GMing is hard, time consuming, and a good GM takes a lot of training, years really, just like any creative endevor. I see a lot of sub-par GMs, one of the reason I don't find myself playing much these days, it is just too hard to find a top-notch GM, and I would rather be the GM in a great game than a PC in an ok game.

What about you? Part or full time? Do you see this trend? Do you consider it a good or a bad thing? Thoughts?

I have been DMing, GMing, Storytelling, etc. for most of my life useful life (useful meaning the point in which you can make logical decisions and know right from wrong).

I started when I was around 7 years old with the Heroes Quest board game, running games for my family. Then I graduated to D&D 1st Edition with a small group of neighborhood friends, then 2nd Edition with my middle school friends and then culminating with 3rd and 3.5 Edition with my high school friends.

I was DM for all this time.

I then joined the military and was DM for all of those guys and the various systems that I would run (Deadlands, White Wolf games, Star Wars, etc).

After the military, I now run 4th Edition from time to time and Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, and soon Deathwatch.

So I think I have been running games for the last 21 years. Me DMing the whole time.

So I think that I'm pretty good at it.

I develop an ending point to the "story", a main villain or villains, and then just make stuff up as the session goes on. I use lots of plot hooks to try and get the party involved in many different areas of the gaming world... this helps to create the feeling that the world truly is alive with many opportunities to explore, etc.

I do notice a trend of railroading in DM's these days that is somewhat disturbing. I would rather play in a group with a decent DM and OK players than in a group with a crappy DM and great players... any bad DM will ruin any experience rather quickly.

A heavy handed DM is also something to be avoided, the whole "I say NO to everything you want to try" DM instead of allowing creativity.

Most of the best moments in my game are when the PC's create the tension all by themselves.. I just sit back and watch.

I've been GM'ing and playing for thirty years this summer! Thirty years!!! i'm pretty much a full time games master with the group of friends both past and present that i've gamed with, about a good 90% of the time. other than me there has only been a few people willing to step and take the responsibilty to running things and accepting it when it all goes belly up.

And yes there is a trend (if you will) of young DM's and old. to go by the book with little or no give when it comes to a player wanting to try something to try out an idea that's not within the borders of the adventure or rules! It's a game and we play it to have fun and enjoy the story and adventure.

Hmm for me it's about 50/50 most of my regular 40K players are also very good GM's and depending on the game or campaign we all take turns GM'ing. It's a matter who who gets 'the urge' first.

Full time for me. Nobody else wants to be the GM, apparently. There's another guy in the group who is always "working on his next campaign" but it never leads to a game.

Part time GM here. My gaming group has some great GM's. Each of the GM's playing a different game and Setting. I consider myself an OK GM. I started out as the GM in my group but I am proud to say that many members in my group have taken up the gauntlet when I encouraged them to give it a spin. Right now, I amk GM'ing RT, a friend runs DH and another will try DW.

My major problem is with Campaigns. I am pretty good at shorter campaigns but long Campaings don't seem to run well for me. In the end I run out of ideas. So I prefer to end my stories before they turn stale working up to a climax and a grand finale. Unless I play Westerns, there is always somebody who needs to bring a stick of dynamite and blow everybody up

I've been playing RPGs for about 15 years now and I can count on one hand the number of times I've been a player, and nearly all of them have been in the time since Dark Heresy came out. Growing up on D&D, I was always the DM and actually had players demand that I DM even when others were willing to take up the mantle in my place.

I agree with SpawnoChaos that the ability to think on the fly and come up with plot hooks and characters with little or no preparation is more important than the ability to create an all encompassing, yet heavily railroaded story.

i can remember the last time a managed to play in an awsome campaign for any degree of time but i no that time is coming soon as the DMing/GMing gennerally fallto to me for DH RT and soon to be DW but our other GM generally does D&D , Iron Kingdoms, mostly everthing else.... which we havent really played scince DH came out but in general id say part time GM.

i generally dont plan session pe say ive found it easier and more fun for the players to have a general story in my head with a few notes and then just let the game evolve

Part-time GM; I'm lucky in that our group includes at least one other more-than-competent GM (the bloke who got me into roleplaying, in fact), and several other GMs for other systems. That said, I have been running the last 3 campaigns that this group has played (WFRP 2e, DH and now RT), but that's mainly because I had the most time on my hands to write a decent campaign. One of the other players is promising to run an L5R 4e campaign once the current game dies down, and another is writing NPCs for a massive Eberron game he's planning to inflict on us.

More or less full-time GM. In my group there are a few that like to GM from time to time, but they generally prefer to play while I generally prefer to GM. Right now we got a GM that has monopoly on Warhammer Fantasy, another that is trying to make Werewolf his "thing" and me that is now going for Science Fiction as my cup of tea. Blue Planet and Rogue Trader especially.

I have over the years run alot of different games. I tried GM'ing early on, but it wasn't until about 1999 or 2000 that I started to feel confident enough to run games and look back at the experience and not feel ashamed. The reasons I started to GM was mostly that the previous GMs moved away to other cities and I really liked those games, plus that I get annoyed when a GM throws reason out the window and says "it says so in the book!" and other silly GM-actions that I'm sure many here have experienced.

My style is somewhat similar to that others have described before me: A plastic game, it is not set in stone how it goes. Lots of interesting NPCs is important, not just dakka-dakka combat NPCs. I value intelligence and perception, so I try to make my games where the intelligent and perceptive can thrive.

That way I work and I like it. I like letting my players have alot of freedom to influence the story. And I have been a full time DM/GM for a year and half and my group wouldn't want it any other way. But I also activley play a character in game, so I still get to have fun being a player too!

-J