Neither Gods Nor Genies

In Game Masters Aren't Gods... They're Genies, Neal Litherland argues that the job of a GM (and it's telling that he calls it a job) is "to create challenges ... decide what treasure the players find, what allies they make, and ... do all these things in service to the players." He sees the game as being akin to a book that the players will want to keep reading. In a related discussion on Discord he made it even plainer, casting the GM in the role of a performer and other players as the audience.

There are a couple of big assumptions at play here and I disagree with both of them.

Books I Read in June - or Didn't

More book reviews.

April May Read

Some more book reviews for the stuff I read in April and May.

Bookmarch

Prince Valiant Volume 3: 1941-1942

Hal Foster & Dan Nadel

More fun adventures. Ogres, giant monsters and several dragons. Introduces some great characters (Boltar, Angor Wrack) and includes a bit of Gawain, which you love to see. And as for Val himself? I'll quote Angor Wrack: I like that hot-headed young idiot. 4/5

Books I Read in February

Murder in Mendocino

Mary Kittredge

This one was a decent cosy mystery with a solid cast of characters. I enjoyed it. 4/5

Books I Read in January

Bullshit Jobs: A Theory

David Graeber

Does a really good job of explaining the problem and how easily it could be solved but leaves me with little hope that it actually will be. 4/5, would recommend.

Foundations Prerelease

Today I played Magic: the Gathering with real cards on an actual table for the first time in about twenty years.

I'm not going to make a habit of it, but I did find that I still enjoy prerelease events. This one, anyway. The new set, Foundations, is basically equivalent to a core set, except that it does have some themes and synergies; in this case some obvious one are Landfall effects, effects that trigger when you have creatures of power 4 or greater, and +1/+1 counters. It seemed to lead to a style of play that reminded me of playing with my friends when we were all just learning to play; quick, simple games with big creatures and not really any combos or super efficient strategies.

Foolish Games

Played a few things I liked this time. And some things I didn't.

All Games are the Same

I played some games. Several of them were very similar.

A Game by Any Other Game

Tried out some more games.