I think that issue speaks to the root of a lot of discontent in gaming.
I've been the GM who wants the game to go in direction X, because it seems really cool, despite what the players want. In my Mutants & Masterminds campaign, I had this idea of the PCs slowly learning that an alternate Earth was slowly invading their world, killing off and replacing their Earth's heroes with alternate Earth analogs.
Instead, the players simply wanted to fight hordes of robots, punch villains clear to the other side of the city, and fight epic, world-spanning battles. It took me a few sessions to figure that out and adjust ("Let's replace this villain's clue-riddled monologue with his throwing a switch as he dies that activates more DeathBots!"), but any earlier in my GMing career the game would've fallen apart under the weight of my frustration.
The stuff that happens between laying out the GM's screen and picking up the dice at the end of the night trumps everything outside of it. That stuff is why we game.
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I've been the GM who wants the game to go in direction X, because it seems really cool, despite what the players want. In my Mutants & Masterminds campaign, I had this idea of the PCs slowly learning that an alternate Earth was slowly invading their world, killing off and replacing their Earth's heroes with alternate Earth analogs.
Instead, the players simply wanted to fight hordes of robots, punch villains clear to the other side of the city, and fight epic, world-spanning battles. It took me a few sessions to figure that out and adjust ("Let's replace this villain's clue-riddled monologue with his throwing a switch as he dies that activates more DeathBots!"), but any earlier in my GMing career the game would've fallen apart under the weight of my frustration.
The stuff that happens between laying out the GM's screen and picking up the dice at the end of the night trumps everything outside of it. That stuff is why we game.