I've been reading a lot of threads here that talk about GMing philosophy, which is all well and good, but I realized that we don't ask the more important question when discussing those philosophies and methods - values. I'm wondering what I'll learn by bringing those into the discussion.
So... if you GM, why? What are your goals? What outcomes do you seek?
What are your values?
I'll go first. 
While I love storytelling and worldbuilding and encounter design, the actual reason I get the dice out and spend a few hours every week on prep is the smiles, the widened eyes, the laughter and jokes. I GM to make my players happy and give them a sense of wonder and let them have fun.
If I'm not doing that, I'm not achieving my goals, If by sacrificing the story and world and encounters I can, over the long haul, get more of those smiles and sounds of awe, I'll do it in a heartbeat.
I GM to see how my prep plus the rules and player collaboration can turn a few ideas and a bit of context into a complex, fascinating story during play filled with complicated characters and stirring drama. I enjoy the challenge that the game provides and the improvisation and extemporaneous thinking that goes with it.
Smiles. Laughter. Fond Memories. All these joys of life I get to share with family and friends. This is why I play D&D.
I DM simply because that's what lends itself best to those ends. When someone else wants to take up that role, I am more than happy to relish the experience from another seat.
Long ago I did it because I was the only one willing to do so. The first time I heard my friends retelling stories of a game I'd run years before, I was hooked for life.
Creating dramatic moments, comraderie, hilarious hijinx, and lifelong friendships is a high calling.
Like all of you, I love providing players with a thrilling experience. I also like seeing how an adventure plays out.
As DM I use a bit more of my creative brain both in planning and responding to players. I love surprises. For me, that's the rush.
Cuz if I don't, who's gonna?
ChrisCarlson wrote:
I DM D&D for the thrill of a natural 20 and the agony of the 1! And all the laught and creative spur in between...
1.) Social
2.) To create art that entertains, captivates, and moves it's audience and participants
3.) To perfect this craft, to stretch its possibilities, test its limits, and do with it what cannot be done in other media.
1. It's fun. 2. The other DMs in my group can play when we rotate the DM duties. 3. I love bringing the Forgotten Realms to life and giving the PCs purpose in that world. 4. I love watching things I've planned work out during play, like how the PCs and players will react to a situation I've set up, and like as not watching in awe when they come up with something I hadn't thought of that completely overcomes the challenge in a very creative way.
I've never been the prettiest, smartest, or most social guy around. I could participate into things, but was never considered a "pillar" of the group. Growing up, when I was about 12, I discovered two things: 1. roleplaying games. 2. that I was good ad losing myself in non-existent stories and fantasy worlds. I was very, very, VERY lonely at the time. I happened to meet people who had even more social ineptitude than I had; we liked the same things and, overall, were the classic "hopeless geeks" (the one who plays videogames all day and never got to the seaside, the one who is actually good at sports but is terribly shy, the one who is damn smart but cannot express any of his feelings, and finally me, the one who is always drawing, dreaming or reading of inexistent places). We played because that gave us a chance to act in a "controlled" environment, one where we were badasses and not "nerds" or "losers".
... Years passed and, after a good deal of turmoil, I turned 17 and began considering my skills at drawing, telling stories, and crafting worlds as something more than escapism. I realized that people around me were not all horrible monsters, and that all the time I had spent confronting the improvisations and unexpected choices of players at the table had prepared me to improvise in everyday's life as well.
I've met many more people, and all my pals have more or less been improved by our collective efforts. 
At the moment, I DM because of the spark in the eyes of my players, and actively search new and inexperienced ones, spreading the hobby in a country (Italy) that, I feel, hasn't yet understood the greatness of roleplay as a tool for the growth of the individual. As an artist and narrator, I also enjoy a collective story way more than one with an active/passive dicothomy (such as a book, movie, or comic).
... and sorry if I sounded overly dramatic 
I don't like many of the responsibilities that come with being a GM, but I really like to world build and collaborative storytelling.It is fun to take a bunch of different ideas mesh them together into a world and see what stories comes from it once players get their hands on it. I like reading the background stories and the freeform storytelling that comes at the end of story arcs when players talk about what they did after the adventure. and speculate
I GM because the role allows for a more consistently enjoyable experience, which is well worth the cost of the added responsibility and effort.
Cennedi wrote:
Primarily I enjoy guiding the overall story that will fulfill every player's desire and each character's destiny. I am the humble caretaker of our shared story that exists purley for our own enjoyment, and the players enjoying their part in this collaborative narrative is the greatest joy. I have never really enjoyed playing a character, and have GM'ed exclusively for many years. My guilty pleasure in it all is that I enjoy the monsters so much more, and being GM gives me full access to every one of them as my very own.
TheZigZagist wrote:
I started DMing 35 years ago because I was the one with the DMG. Gave it up for a few years beause others were doing it better. I learned everything I could from them, and now I bring that experience and a lot of RL experience to the table.
I like world-building, and tinkering with the mechanics (I always thought all AD&D vets did, but I am learning different on these forums), but the thing I like best is taking the disparate threads given to me by the characters' backstories and their choices, and weaving them into a cohesive story. Often it seems like the only possible story that could have resulted; I fret about how to nudge the players in a particular direction without railroading them, and they head that way before I have done anything to nudge them. The more they give me to work with, the more I can give them; and the more I give them, the more they give me.
The flip side of that is, TBH, the accolades. I am happy when my players are happy. The best moments are when there is some sort of reveal, and the player's expression of shock or surprise or the dawning of understanding, followed by a realization that it couldn't have happened any other way, is identical to what his character would be experiencing. I can't pull it off all the time, but when I do, it is a crowning moment of awesome.
THEMNGMNT wrote:
Cennedi wrote:
TiaNadiezja wrote:
TheZigZagist wrote:
It's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it.
Besides, gargantuan undead slithering tracker isn't a PC option.
Being the DM means being the only one at the table who gets to play totally evil bastiches!!!
ChrisCarlson wrote:
TheZigZagist wrote:
Because...I am.
Because at that moment I wasn't playing?
Or is this a 'only ever GM's' thread?
Bit different from taking turns at GM'ing.
Noon wrote:
We take turns DMing, though I prolly dm the most. I like DMing coz you get the biggest say in the story, you get to play all the bad guys, and you get to ride the crazy plan train that the players come up with. I love the laughs, beers and the "yyeeaaahhh!" crits and death roll 20s, and the "awwww sh*****t" when its a 1 and we all look glumly at the paizo fumble deck. Its good fun, but I also like playing just as much.
TheZigZagist wrote:
I DM because first I don't like being the player. I guess I've DM'd so much that it's weird for me to be on the other side playing just one character. It's like a passenger in a car. I'd rather be driving. Second because I'm also the collector of games. I dig getting down and reading about a games system, world ect. Then I like the challenge of bringing that to life and acting as the characters in that tale. I've always been the storyteller amongst all my friends so it just always seemed natural that I act as the story judge and I love it. Note I haven't been a PC since 92'. Yikes.
I used to grudgingly DM because I wanted to be the player so badly. Of course, this was when I was a teenager and I'm now 35. As I've grown older, I slowly wanted to more and more become the DM. I'm at the point now that I firmly prefer to DM over being a player. Both are fun, but I prefer DMing.
In fact, most of my friends that DM/GM never run D&D anymore. They always run whatever new RPG flavor of the week that strikes their fancy. I think some may get back to DMing next, but time will tell after the core books come out. I prefer to just stick to D&D and only D&D. I've tried other games, but nothing has as profound an effect as D&D does. I also have gotten to know the lore, worlds, and rules, far better than my friends likely due to my "specializing in D&D" if you will, compared to other games, so of my groups I am definitely the most well versed in D&D.
But, most importantly, the main reason I DM is that my players enjoy it. I can tell that they get out of it what I put into it. And we have fun no matter what we do. I knew my current group were going to be awesome because when we ran Keep on the Borderlands for the playtest, our first session we didn't roll a die, and it was amazingly hilarious. Their enthusiasm fuels my enthusiasm to even higher heights and it was already pretty ridiculously high at it's base.
I found I enjoy it a lot more focusing on collaborative storytelling. I've had instances where the players hated something as trivial as an NPC's name, so they renamed him. His name is forever that now, and retroactively is that as well. That's fine, whatever, just have fun. The teenage me likely wouldn't have allowed this or even considered it being a good idea, but the older me loves it. I typically have several different quests and adventures with seeds everywhere prepared so we have a more open world feel. And we cut down arguments at the table, as that is the single thing to me that makes a game not fun.
In fact, here is the rule we have. All arguments/discussions about a rule can never last more than 5 minutes. In fact, you initially only get 1 minute and we try to resolve it then as even 1 minute is a long time for 6 people to wait while time is stopped. If someone has a reservation with a rule or something, they get one minute to present their side with no one else talking. If at the end of the 1 minute they need more time, or we need to discuss either me and them, the group as a whole, or the players as a whole, we can expand to 5 minutes but that's the absolute max.
At the end of that time, we come to a decision. We may have agreed on something in the talk, or maybe we vote, or maybe I think something has to be X way for balance (forcing my way is only ever done for balance and only rare instances at that, like the players disagreeing with ability increases maxing out at 20 naturally would be an example of a rule I wouldn't budge on). Then it's done. We can talk about it at great length AFTER the game and maybe come to another long-term decision then, but 5 minutes is an eternity for an argument vs playing, and even 1 minute is a long time. I instigated these rules after playing under another GM in an RPG system he created. He and another player were fairly drunk, and me and another player were sober. The two drunkies argued literally over EVERYTHING, and the sobers didn't have fun. No exaggeration, the vast majority of the game was spent with them arguing and in the hour we played, we made it to two rooms past the first and then just gave up. Alcohol may have played a factor, but it really showed me the negative effects of arguments over rules during the game.
As a great man once said on the GiantITP Boards:
Tis better to DM in Baator than to play in Mount Celestia
I GM because it gives me a way to share the stories I have, and see what my players do with them. I feel kind of like I have two GMing personalities: the guy that sits down at his computer, writes out adventures, and plans the best campaign ever, and the guy behind the screen, chuckling as the players kill another crucial NPC. I've started coming up with methods of compromising the two (allowing plenty of freedom while still predicting likely paths the campaign could take), but I definitely enjoy seeing my players come up with something I hadn't anticipated. It's also good exercise for writing– it forces me to realistically consider what options the characters (AKA the PCs) have, and why they won't do what the plot demands. And because I like having an activity where I can get together with my friends and do something we all enjoy. As an aside, I also play on occasion, and I enjoy the game from both sides of the screen, although I definitely prefer being the GM.
I used to GM because I used to buy into the crap 'tell a story!' thing, which is so screwed up it'll screw you up over time (unless you don't care about railroading, in which case you'll probably do fine). Now I mostly GM to try and actually run the sort of game I'd like to play in, so as to try and atleast have that game going on.
I like designing adventures and sharing them with my players, that is mainly why I like to DM.
Roleplaying games like D&D are all about having a creative mind, which is not given to every players I've encountered.
I especially like creating long campaigns with an epic ending and try to include my players' characters as main protagonists in the story so that they feel what they do have an impact in the world around them.
Why do I DM?
- Not because I want to control my friends
- Not because I want to be god of an imaginary world
- Not because I think I have a monopoly of understanding the rules
- Not because I believe I am more creative than my friends
- Not because no-one else will
It's simply because I get to role-play all the NPCs, which is more fun that role-playing just one PC.
I'm not selfish - we take turns.
For me its about the story, and the players being the driving force of the storytelling. I like to create situations at the table that encourage players to immerse in their characters, I encourage players to assume the first person narrative, their own POV. For me this is the real magic of D&D and rpg in general: the collaborative story telling experience.
Secondary to this its how I create a world that my players want to return to (and escape into). If Im not doing this Im doing my job. Its also about tailoring the story to the needs of the characters and the style of play.