Ben's Gaming Maniphilosophesto

"There comes a time in a young GM's life, when he must write his maniphilosophesto. Your time was yesterday, and on account of tardiness, you get to clean the privy for a week."
-Jens Svenkmeyer

Jason did it. Matt did it. Now it seems I'm motivated to do it. Meaningless pontification, by and large, and essentially stream of consciousness.

I'm going to break my "principles" down into 3 categories, layers if you will, where I think different things are important: Out-of-game, Meta-game, and In-game. I'm not really that interested in where you think things fall in this spectrum, unless it's crucial for some more substantive debate. It's just an organizational structure for my thoughts.

Out-of-game This is a very general category, mostly relating to simple group dynamics. As such, the principles I'm putting here are largely redundant with any primer on "how to hang out/work/play with a group of people".
For the most part, I think that for the things in this category, Concordance is by and large the most important thing, by which I mean that everyone is "on a level" with everyone else: things start going sour when one or some fraction of the peoples is doing significantly more or less than everyone else. I'll make specific notes about where I think there's more to it.
1.) Commitment: pretty self explanatory. I think it has two components: time, and resources. In both cases, it's basically a purely quantitative issue
-Time: the more important factor. In general, I think it's important that people are attending sessions, and that people are in agreement about how long a session should be.
Ben's personal opinion: while I think time concordance is crucial, I personally think that a given session should last at least 6 hours. less than that is ok, but really only if people are very focused (see below). I actually think frequency of play is less important, though if you go too long, the feel of the game disappears. more important than frequency, I think, is that most of the players are present for every session: I think the game suffers when there is a steady rotation of present characters.
-Resources: Everyone should do what their means allow, and do it freely. That means if you have a car, you should offer rides, and if you have money for food/drinks/books/cards, you should contribute. Not much more to say about it than that.

2.) Focus: I think a good game is immersive: since tabletop rpg's provide no visual or auditory cues, everybody has to contribute to some hazy collective unconscious of what's going on. The problem is, this is disrupted easily if just one person isn't on board. As long as everyone understands what the level of focus in a given game should be that's fine, I suppose.
Ben's personal opinion: I think that even small drops in focus during play time come with a high cost and a feed forward loop in terms of the game sucking ass. less focus makes for a less imersive game, which encourages less focus, etc. I think these sorts of things should be gotten out at the beginning and the end of a session, and maybe in defined "breaks", but during playtime, I think anything not directly relevant to the game needs to be gone. Small deviations from this are ok, but anything more than ditzels is a problem.

3.) Respect: Seems obvious, but still worth saying. Oddly, I don't really think any interpersonal ties beyond this are required: I don't think you need to like the people you play with, I don't think you need to trust them personally, or think they are great people, but I do think that you need to treat them respectfully. Most importantly, never let your temper get the better of you during a session, and obviously, communication is key.

Meta-game This category is for things relating to the roles of players and GMs, the rules of a game, how disputes are handled, and how people RP.

1.) Trust: I think that when it comes to actually sitting at the table and gaming, everybody needs to trust one another in one important respect: that they are all committed to telling a good story (see below). For players and GMs, this means slightly different things:
-The GM: The GM should trust his players actions as being directed towards telling the story they like since (see below) I think that the story that ends up being told should absolutely be a collaboration.
Ben's personal opinion: Players should get a lot of leeway, and a good GM must adapt his/her own ideas of what "good" and "bad" RPing is based on their players' playstyle. Importantly, this does NOT mean that the GM is not entitled to an opinion (see "the players", next).
-The players: The players first and foremost must trust the GM: mostly in the sense that the GM is stewarding the story and that the actions he/she takes are in the interests of making that story interesting. They should also trust each other to the same end, meaning that they don't get upset in the meta-game realm about character treachery, irritating-ness, or PvP.
Ben's personal opinion: Of all the things up to this point, I think player trust towards the GM is the most important. As the only nominally "objective" participant of the game, the GM is by definition the arbiter of the rules and the game world mechanics. As such, players must operate on the idea that the GM is trusting them, as above, and that there is method to whatever madness he/she cooks up. While I have some vague fantasies about a "GM-less" system, as long as there is a GM that person is in charge and requires the good will of his/her players, or the story suffers. The bottom line: players that do not trust their GM and second guess/argue with them on a "meta-game" level are disrupting the game severely.

2.) more here later...

In Game I think there is a lot of crossover with the metagame category, but this section is basically about the actions players and GMs take in character, directly affecting the game world:

1.) The Story: This should be the highest priority of both players and GM, since it is the only finished product at the end.
Ben's personal opinion: That the story trumps everythign is why I think players need to give the Gm so much leeway: he/she is the primary guide of the story and interfering with that for one's own personal gain is completely counterproductive. The GM MUST be the highest authority because he/she is the chief steward of the story (with the players assisting). This comes down to the fact that at my core I am a "narrativist". If the players/GM use this as a meter of what should and shouldn't be allowed, the overall effect will be positive.

2.)