You see, I've never had such bad GM's so frequently that I feel this strongly. But I still agree with Lormyr and others that this should be in the rules. I don't think it has anything to do with GM whim or how good they are. It has to do with the rules explaining themselves.
That is a good way of putting it.
Out of personal curiosity, may I ask what area of the world you live in, and how extensive your convention play has been? I am always interested in learning what sort of random GMs people tend to encounter geographically.
Happy to answer that. I've lived in Hamilton Ontario since early 2005, but I"m originally from Indiana. I've played a LOT of convention games, but a lot of that is because I've gone to GenCon every year (except once to Origins) SINCE 2005, mostly to visit with old Indiana friends. I've also done my best to go to regional conventions here in Ontario as well; formerly Hammercon and Pandemonium, more recently Breakout. I like playing and running convention games a lot, but I've also been pretty deep in the indie-RPG scene (e.g. Games On Demand at GenCon) over the past 15 years. I played one 4E Missions game at GenCon (I think it was 4E) but that is the only Shadowrun I have played since like 1992.
I've played with a LOT of GMs at conventions, and I would break them down like this:
10% - super awesome. The reasons they were awesome might be all over the map, depending on the game, but I walked away thinking that person was at least as good a GM as I am, and in most cases far far better than I would be at the game I was playing.
60% - good. I enjoyed myself. The GM knew the rules, knew the game, did their job well, and was friendly. I was glad I spent 2-4 hours with them. There may have been problems with the game itself; I might have even hated the game. But that was just a mismatch between me and the game, and not the GM's fault.
20% - bad. A waste of time. Again the reasons are all over the map, depending on game and circumstance. Often the GM was just very inexperienced. But many GM's were just bad; they didn't grasp even the basic universal principles of GM'ing, like paying attention to your players or making sure "screen-time" is as evenly assigned as possible. Some were actual jerks.
10% - laughably awesomely bad. So bad that you still tell the story with your friends years later. So bad you remember individual moments of the experience like it was yesterday. So bad that after the fact, when you tell yourself "I should have just left the table" you reply "Yeah, but then I wouldn't have this awesome story of how bad it was to tell". This is almost universally a GM who a) has no idea how to even GM at all and b) THINKS they are a super awesome GM. That is a toxic combination.
EDIT: I'm probably overestimating the last category by proportion. Those sessions loom so large in memory that its hard to accurately assess their frequency.
EDIT2: I'd say at least half of the bad games I played were in cases where a GM had been "roped in" to run something with little preparation because someone else dropped out, or where a game company was clearly taking anyone with a pulse to make sure they filled X tables at GenCon. This is why I made a comment in a different thread on this issue; this is IMO the WORST THING a game company trying to make a good impressions can do.
