I think that using other people’s materials is another key skill; we all do it by using someone else’s system, but you’ll see different levels of success. Different levels of making the game or the adventure their own.

Trying to look at this split objectively, I’d say that a GM with both skillsets is categorically more experienced and versatile than a GM who lags in one area or the other.

Assuming you define the quality of a GM’s skills by how much everyone at the table has at her games, though, I don’t think either type is superior. I’ll always take a GM that delivers me a fun game in their strongest style over a GM that runs a bad game in a style they’re less comfortable with. And as a player, I don’t much care which style of game I’m playing in — my litmus test starts and ends with “Am I having fun? Is everyone else having fun?”

I just wanted to make one final point. When I parsed the terms, I never intended to imply that a Manager does no “creating.” Good managers adapt the materials to their group and PC decisions. This, however, is done on a far different scale than a creator.

I’ll have to muse on the “world-builder” Creator vs. the “adventure” Creator. That’s a very good distinction!

I would go so far as say that there is even a signficant different among the creators. That is, those who can design encounters and scenerios, use a different skill set than those who create worlds and settings.

That doesn’t mean a single individual can’t do both well, but it seems to me to require a different tool set. Settings creators utilize very macro thinking, whereas scenerio designers are involved in the mechanics at a micro level.

But art of the Game Mastering clearly falls into the “manager” category. As for the difference between the homebrew and the published guy, all I can say is it probably takes a great deal of imagination and innovation to take a published work, and “make it their own.”

Distilling published material and conveying it to players so they can be involved in an interesting and compelling encounter is a much under-appreciated skill.

So, I have to reject that someone can be a good GM and not do any creation at all. It’s a form of bad GMing not to adapt at all what someone else has prepared for your group, but I would NOT say that good Managers are inferior to good Creators… both are good things and if you have a GM who can do both well you are very lucky indeed.

Although, until recently, I subscribed to the view that to be a great GM you had to run homebrew stuff, I don’t agree with it any more at all.

The skills involved with being a great manager run far deeper than those required to write a great module/adventure. Acting, emotional intelligence, time management, pacing, empathy, consistency… all the time with 4-6 players staring at you. Compare this with prep… in the comfort of your own home, you can take as much time as you like over it, you generally know your players and their characters… I’d much rather be in front of a PC preparing what might happen than being sat in front of them deciding what will happen.

Besides, most of the really great campaigns I’ve played in have been based on published adventures.

But here’s my real point…

Now, writing an adventure knowing you won’t be managing it… like game designers do, I guess… that’s impressive… and managing a game without any prep… like crazy improv GMs do, I guess… that scares me. That would impress me.

Perhaps a great GM is a great manager who CAN run homebrew modules, or CAN run published modules, or CAN improv a session out of thin air… I know this is a big ask, but we’re talking ‘great’, which to me means aspirational.

Aren’t the great GMs the ones who can do the Designer/Creator stuff even when they following a published module?

Is a player a good player if he always plays well during the session, even though he always uses pregens or lets the GM stat out his character?

My GM question is more of a “when evaluating a GM, can we look solely to Manager as a criterion?”

Interesting how it doesn’t go the other way. A Creator that doesn’t manage (such as writing published adventures) won’t usually get called a “GM.”

If I ever found an adventure I enjoyed I would probebly insert it into my grand arc and give it a shot. I think we all excell at different things. Perhaps the person who is not very good at making their own adventures is a master of the rules, while the guy who does is simply “so so”.

What happens then?