I actually posted this a few months ago in my own blog in the “It’s about trust” post, and I still say it’s about trust.

So, when I sat down to play D&D 4e (quite the reverse on what you do, Chatty as I GM a SW Saga Game) my one goal was to simply have fun and turn my brain off. GMing a game means you have to be extremely on the ball and have five ideas in your head at once, it’s nice to turn that off once in a while. I don’t think I remember the names of all the NPCs even.
.-= Katana Geldar´s last blog ..Even Jedi Masters have answering machines =-.

I’ve been going the other way with monsters for the moment, keeping them the same as the MM but reskinning them to be something different. It’s like some kind of minigame for us:

‘hmm, burst 3 slow that leads to a paralysis…AHA, it’s a medusa!’

This will certainly get tired soon and I’ll start doing something weird to confuse him utterly and keep him on his toes

However, I would be a bit bothered by Monster Manual Guy and I’d probably take some sort of pleasure in creating monsters that are only slightly differentt from the manual ones… just to challenge and confuse him.

I’m GM in our current campaign and certainly 3 of the 5 guys in my group are reasonably experienced GM’s so I see my fair share of backseating from them.

One is an avid monster manual reader. More often than not before I’ve even finished describing what a monster looks like he knows exactly what it is and has at least a vague idea of the type of attacks and approximate defense values. Basically with him around, we don’t bother with knowledge checks for monsters, we just assume the party knows enough to react appropriately.

He’s also a vivid storyteller when he runs games, this tends to manifest in him taking more narrative control during conversation or RP segments of the game. Control is too strong a word, perhaps ‘leading the improv’ is a better way of stating it. He’s the first into and the last out of character in most cases.

Overall, I find most backseat GM’ing in my current campaign tends to lead to metagaming more than ‘control issues’ and I don’t really have too much of a problem with this. In fact, once the session is over (never during) I’ll reveal the mechanical aspects of certain traps or monsters that the party were intrigued by and discuss the decisions I made at the time or reveal the mechanical chances or defenses of certain creatures.

This has several benefits for us, it allows the players that ‘hidden knowledge’ they were experiencing after the fact, and allows them to analyse their strategies so they know whether they took the right approach or could they have handled it better with hindsight. It also allows us to discuss what they felt went well and what didn’t, what calls I made they did/did not agree with etc. This helps with the ‘feedback’ loop and makes sure I’m doing things they generally agree with or is providing them with an interesting time.

For me and mine, backseat GMing is a reasonably positive outcome, it’s comforting playing with people that know the rules because if I’m not 100% on something, I will generally defer to the guy who I trust has a better recall skill than me to provide me with at least an approximation of the right answer that we can resolve fully after the session is concluded

As soon as the DM starts declaring “oh, your whole party suddenly falls unconscious” or “the bridge can’t hold up under your weight and breaks” I start tearing him apart. I demand saving throws and skill checks; I scrutinize the logic and logistics of the situation; I start metagaming like nobody’s business.

It’s fine to come up with fun and whimsical situations that kinda fudge how things are supposed to be, but when you start messing with my character’s life, you have to answer to the RULES.
.-= Flashman85´s last blog ..Jobless Superheroes =-.

At my best, I’m a rules reference… at other times, I remind the GM that there are rules for things they’re just breezing by. That can be important– even when you feel like a dick– if the rules your pointing out are important for a character to feel useful. [For example, ignoring the skill system in 3.x is fast-- but makes being a Rouge useless.]

Must I remind you that your are going to play with world renowned players tonight? Not that I want to stress you with that you know? No pressure, nope, no siree, none!

That being said, I can’t help a certain dose of meta in combat!
.-= Eric Maziade´s last blog ..On the road to Spellgu- postmortem =-.

@Conlaen: Like Yan says. When someone acts as a neutral Rules reference, everything is fine. If someone is using his knowledge to his advantange… that’s the definition of rules Lawyering… it just happens that your GM was too likely Newbie-ish to counter argue or shut him up

Well… that’s what I used to do… now I’ll just throw a stun grenade if I get too bored.

@The Gun Nut: There are acceptable versions of Backseat GMing. One is shadow GMing where another player is in on the GM’s plot and helps the party go forward in the story by suggesting courses of action that go toward the GM’s planned scenes and goals. The second one is when the GM delegates traditionally GMing duties to others.

Like Yan is my Rules Keeper in our game. He’s the first guy I ask before diving into the book. You can also delegate Initiative tracking and Status tracking.

The big difference here is that this type of backseat GMing is agreed upon in advance with the GM! And is subjected to cancellation when the GM feels able and willing to take on all responsibilities.

In our group I’m such a reference (although Chatty knows the rule as much as I do) and I’ll often get from my other player hard look because I remind the DM of a rule that hinder someone else or even myself.

The rules are the contract we have agreed upon that determine the physics of our world so we can have fun. Ignoring a rule just for yourself while imposing it on others is stealing from the other their right to have the same fun as yourself. Remove or adding rules should be done in an official way so that every one in the play group knows what are is new possibility or limitation.

So in my book either you recall rules for every one or you shut up.

The person in question was a weathered GM who’d know the books inside and out. And it wasn’t so much ruleslawyering I guess as saying: “Nono, I know the rules, and I definately know I can pull off a summersault here getting behind the 2 mindflayers and oneshotting both of them”. Our relatively newby GM at the time would just go “Errr sure I guess you know better then I do”. So not as much ruleslawyering I guess, as just telling the GM how it is ((even if he was sometimes just quoting the rules that worked in his favor, conveniently forgetting the one that would ruin his entire strategy).

I think I do a good job at not showing it and even shedding it mid-game (as I love to RP when I mange to kick it loose).

I’m the worst backseat DM when I’m DMing.

(And I’ll be watching your backseat DMing in tomorrow’s game… uh… or is that me doing backseat RPing? Eek!)
.-= Eric Maziade´s last blog ..On the road to Spellgu- postmortem =-.

There not being a story to find, as much as story we build, might be part of why 3 is good behaviour.
.-= Tommi´s last blog ..Burning death frost doom =-.