My GM Merit Badges

Found a neat idea here, and I thought I'd share my own philosophy here.

My games have combat, and I reward clever play whenever I can, and I will attempt to use clever tactics against you as well.

Part of the above is a love of player wit over character capability.  I do think character stats matter, but more as a tool for the player than as an iron writ about how someone should play.

My game, my rules.  It's very important, for the above, that the rules remain consistent, but in the heat of the moment, I'll improvise before I look something up in the book.

Ultimately, I'm trying to create an interesting story.  I feel the tactics and the player-actions will feed into that to create something special, but they are secondary to this concern (hence why some dice fudging does happen).

Part and parcel of writing that interesting story is feeling larger than life.  After all, we RP to escape, right?  I do love some deep simulationism, but I'd rather run a game about epic romances and tragic failures than the banality of evil (though that can have its appeal at times).

Because really, at the end of the day, this is about you.  It's about an amazing exploration of people, and how they interact with one another, how they love and how they die.  It's not enough to fight, you need a reason to fight, and that means relationships, and relationships mean drama.

But I like really dark themes, often very disempowering themes.  I can enjoy the "walking barefoot over broken glass" phase a little too much.  I tame it as best as I can, but it'll leak out eventually.  You can't really get the most out of my games if you're easily bothered by certain themes.