On a more serious note you make a fairly good point, if your super possessive of the game then it may become a problem. Personally I’ve never had the experience of a DM who was that possessive over the game. Something I’m rather happy with.

Seriously, I think the actual words matter only when they matter.

In other words, if I refer to ‘my campaign’ in order to differentiate it from the campaign I play in, then it doesn’t matter.

But if I tell my players to take their hippie-gamer narrative hands off my campaign, then it matters.

Thanks for the information, I think I may use this for my next campaign. I think even using a pre-built world my players and I add enough to warrant a wiki or something to keep our adventure log and campagin notes in.

Thanks for the idea.

Sorry, ran online game last tnight and had consults all morning today.

Currently, there are 11 players able to edit the Celtricia wiki. One of the nice things about the wiki format is you can set things up to be approved and every change by a player at least goes by my desk.

Some of them help heavily with rule organizing, or pushing me to complete certain parts of the rule or setting. Brian, the PC who plays Varconavitch, recently rewrote part of the frontpage prose since it dealt with one of his older characters.
Players also sometimes go through periods of great productivity, or adding notes into the play groups areas.

Now, let me tell you the big issue. Though you can lock certain pages (and I do), both in terms of viewing and in terms of editing, you have to trust the players not to metagame.
http://celtricia.pbworks.com/Venolvian-Empire
this page is a historical page, and the information herein is known in completeness by only a few, and by no player. So I have to deal with this, though the Players so far have not caused any issues here.

and when referring to games, I learned not to say “my game” instead I either use the name of the campaign or just say “in a campaign I ran”…

@LesInk – Very good point! I too tend to have a strong hook when I try to get my players to buy into a game; ditto for the other GMs in my group. As a starting point, that definitely speaks to ownership.

@LordVreeg – I also like this take on things quite a bit — three parts makes sense, and I can map your perspective to my own experiences well. Good call!

@shinma – It’s been ages since I read that article, but I remember finding it interesting. Looking back over it now (link for the curious) I’m reminded that it doesn’t map terribly well to my own experiences, though I do like thinking about the core concept.

If I had to pigeonhole myself as GM using those four game types, my approach would be a mix of trailblazing and bass playing — though again, I think it’s an imperfect model.

But I like the name, it gives a group possessive without the confusion “our” can bring about.

M. Joseph Young wrote a great essay (http://ptgptb.org/0027/theory101-02.html) attempting to answer the possible avenues of resolving this paradox and I believe this perception of game and players and world sharing is also intrinsically enmeshed with the point you’re bringing up here.

I think it would be interesting to write an article or correlate your GMing style to how you think of it. I tend to think of (quoty fingers) “my game” as ‘the game I’m running’. But then I’m a bass player style GM at heart ^_~.

How do your players contribute? Do they flesh out areas that just their characters been or do they try to add on ideas on top of what you’ve already created?