You need a bit of both. I don’t want a cakewalk for my storytelling, but I want some break from the pain train every now and again.

Like, i’d love a good story, but I wanna work for it and risk things to get the reward at the end. I don’t want the game to be a formality, I wanna roll dice and worry about whether or not I’m gonna die sometimes

I feel like this comic embodies the personalities of Aabria Iyengar and Brennan Lee Mulligan

My first and only dm was a huge dick

The start of the campaign village is being attacked, I picked a swordsman cus swing sword is easy probably good for a beginner

Anyways I roll a 20, DM hypes it up saying I have impeccable footwork, draw the blade from its sheath perfect, doing this epic buildup for about a minute or 2. Then he flatly says I miss my perfect swing because every enemy was 200 feet away

That was in middle school and now my GF is trying so hard to get me into Baldurs Gate and now it’s just a matter of me doing some DnD homework about classes and other stuff so I’m not going in 100% blind

I'm not trying to kill my party, but I also won't stop them from being stupid and getting themselves killed. I design my campaigns like an open world video game. Everything is going on and just reacts to the players. They can find bits of information about things and then act on it, doing whatever they want until they start finding clues about the big bad because I like to try and make it more natural with the characters just existing in the world and not the stereotypical call for adventure a lot of modules and stuff do. But this also means balancing out the world by having the encounter zones being somewhat static. Over here shit is low level, but over there stuff is high level. But like, they will have clues. If they hear the rumors of a Balrog at level 3 and want to go fight it, that's on them.

DM 1: "We're going to have a magical just-so adventure and everything will be on rails! I've got a bunch of art I'm going to show you and I expect everyone to do voices and play in whatever vague medieval fantasy pastiche passes for In Character. I want everyone to have a good time, but also cry when my NPC gives a twenty minute monologue. This game is my entire personality."

DM 2: "Here's a stack of character sheets. I found a dungeon in a magazine called The Infinite Rectal Immolator that looks cool as hell. You have a 25 point buy and three magic weapons of less than 15k gp each. Just ordered a stack of pizzas and a five gallon jug of Mountain Dew. Let's see who makes it through. If we get bored, I've also got the new Halo game on XBox."

And then there are the cyberpunk DMs that do both.

DungeonCast School vs Gygax School.

One comes from the influence of tabletop streams that focus on narrative building because it's got a broader audience appeal and they're usually close friends with the players at the table and want to hype up their characters.

The other comes from the generational trauma Gary Gygax inflicted on nerdom by insisting that the DM wins by killing all the PCs.

It's not the GM trying to break my spirit, it's my frickin' dice. Those little death polygons want to humiliate me by proxy. This is why I bought a creme brulee torch, you little fuckers.

I'm dming my first campaign soon wish me luck hope I'm number one

The second one is definitely me. I've had so many players cry during games that I've lost track.

To be clear, always the good "This moment really emotionally resonated with me" kind of tears. I do very narrative heavy games, and I like to really crank the drama to 11.

A good DM is both of these. They want you to feel that the danger is real, because higher stakes means the narrative payoff feels earned. They want you to feel like the world is wonderous, so that it feels like a thing worth fighting for.

ITT: discussion about BDSM using codewords and allegories in every comment.

I am (was to be more correct) more in between

From the campaigns I've DMed, I've gone for a bit of an in-between. My primary focus is to have a fun, shared narrative. I'll always let players do stupid things that get them into grave danger. But at most, I'll usually only ever kill a few of the PCs.

If they act carefully, they can avoid getting into that situation all together. If they act stupid, they may have some deaths on their hands, but never a TPK. I don't want that kind of narrative dead end.

The other thing, is that I will never put the players in such a situation in which there isn't a way out of it. Usually this comes down to abusing the rule of cool a bit. Maybe they use a well aimed shatter to collapse a cave and separate themselves from their enemies. Maybe they jump down the cliff into the river below. Maybe the enemies have taken such a beating themselves that they find they aren't willing to fight to the death.