I couldn’t let this comment pass without making it a topic of discussion here on TT. It’s from Topher on the HackMaster forums:

There are two types of GMs: Those who believe their players really know what they want and those who run a good game.

Topher was responding to an article by Jeff Rients entitled How to Awesome-Up Your Players, which I linked to on TT.

This comment comes from a thread on the HM forums called How NOT to run a game. Jeff is (no surprise) taking the criticism very well, and since I couldn’t disagree more with Greylond’s sentiment in the opening post (“Should have been titled, “How to Wuss-Up your campaign”.“) it’s interesting to see an alternate perspective.

“The GM knows best” smacks of “Daddy knows best” to me, hence the title of this post. There are cases when the GM does know best, but there are plenty of times when that’s just true at all — partly because players get a flashlight while the GM gets a 150 watt bulb.

What do you think?