is your fun my problem?

15 Jul, 2026

sometimes.

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postscriptum

being a recount of the RPG modalities I have experienced, and the differing levels of experiential curation required of the GM therein.

short pickup games

I love running at my local game shop's RPG nights because I love the struggle. People often buy a ticket for the night without checking Discord to see what games are on. They just show up and get given a seat. I affectionately term these people as 'stragglers'. Con games also belong in this category¹.

In this type of game, I am the host and the players are my guests. They have arrived with no prior information, no expectations, and possibly zero buy-in, wanting only to have a fun night of roleplaying. I therefore am responsible for their safety, comfort, and enjoyment, and any encroachment on these things is the result of a mistake that I can learn from. As a player, it sucks to pay for something only to realise it's not your jam, becoming captive to it for the next 3 to 4 hours. It is rare to have in ready supply the level of assertion and bravery required to stand up for yourself and back out of a table you just sat down at.

To deliver such a curated, on-the-fly tailored experience is of course an incredibly high standard to aspire to. GMing can be hard enough even when you're not trying to also pace the session effectively, read up to 6 different strangers' facial expressions and body language, keep an active record of who's spoken the most and the least, and manage player safety all at the same time.

But that's exactly why I love it. These games light a fire in me. They are the Ultimate Challenge.

If you want to actually improve as a GM or referee, run oneshots for strangers. There's nothing like it.

open table sandbox campaign

This is my Ideal Game².

The open table games that I run and play in are Refereed, not GMed. The difference, as I see it, is this.

Many modern RPG texts posit that the GM's task is to 'roleplay as the world'. This is only half true. Modern D&D in particular also expects the GM to be a director, teacher of rules, secretary, scribe, and master of ceremonies. This holistic role is indeed worthy of the title, 'Games Master'.

A Referee, by contrast, performs only one small sliver of that portfolio. They are truly only 'roleplaying as the world'. When I referee, I feel exactly zero obligation to make things fun. There is a world, and in it are infinite things, variously Rad or Shit or somewhere in between. If, as players, you or I are bored, it is entirely our fault.

This is the sharp twin edge of agency. No decisions are off limits, including un-fun ones.

As a player, I find that this style requires discipline. I have to think harder about what I want to achieve in the game and as a person. Not just what I want to do, but how to do it, and whether it'll result in a good time for me and my friends.

I play semi-regularly in a weekly 1-hour ODND megadungeoncrawl online (a real outlier for me, i HATE playing online). There's lots of players, and several years' worth of lore. I spend most of my time in the call listening or daydreaming. The experience is fun and meaningful because I am part of something greater — a campaign in the truer sense of the word — than a single character with a backstory or (god forbid) a 'narrative arc'.

None of this is necessarily good or bad, because I like different things at different times. Sometimes I just wanna go kinda nuts and act out until the GM bounces me back onto the rails, and sometimes I want to experience a carefully curated theme park ride³.

Scheduling is a huge part of why this is my Ideal Game. I show up and run for whoever's there. The admin is minimal. It helps that I don't get upset about no-shows; I am the kind of person that feels a secret guilty relief when plans are cancelled, even ones I was genuinely looking forward to.

Trad D&D 5E Campaign

I ran a 3 year long 5E campaign with a mostly fixed cast.

I recruited players by circulating a carefully written pitch document online that featured 3 different campaign ideas I had, and settled on a group and campaign idea that all 6-ish of us were excited about. I spoke privately with each player about their characters, playstyle, goals, motivations, backstories, and more. I then developed story beats, NPCs, and hooks to pair perfectly with their characters. Different chapters of the campaign focused on different PCs' backstories.

We had a session zero where I set out expectations for table etiquette, attendance, and frequency of games. Throughout the campaign, I collected feedback and consulted the players on houserules and campaign structure.

This represents a middle ground between the prior modalities. Players had considerable buy-in to this campaign, and lots of input into how the game was run in order to maximise enjoyment and meaningful play. However, this still occurred under my auspices. Additionally, player curation of fun happened mostly above the table. In-game, it was up to me as the Games Master to lead the players through an experience that hit on all of the discussion points we had covered as a group before and around the campaign.

If you're running a regular game for your homies, this has got to be one of the most fulfilling ways to do it. Unfortunately, scheduling is just way too much of a fucking nightmare for me to take something like this on again. Not for a few years, at least. Maybe when I finally burn out and pick up a 9-5.

closing

so... yeah. Sometimes your fun is my problem. sometimes it isn't. I run into the most trouble when I forget what kind of game I'm running and get my expectations mixed up, like this game where I tried to run a oneshot like a Referee instead of an MC.

Keep your head on a swivel. Clear eyes, full hearts. Can't lose. Take care. Brush your hair. Etc.