GM Merit Badges

I just discovered the GM Merit Badges. Mine would be:

Some were a hard decision. For example, I've tinkered a lot with the rules of the Vampire: The Requiem game I am running for eight years now. Other games, like Dungeon World, Fate or Savage Worlds I run by the book. The third category includes LotFP, where I am house-ruling some minor things. For RuneQuest 6 I am planning on hand-waving a couple of things to reduce complexity in combat. I usually like to tell my players up front which changes I made, so I am not a rule-zero guy. On the other hand, I don't like rules discussions during the game. Well, better to leave off the Tinkering and the Rule Zero badge.

As to the last badge: "Players should better run when the odds are against them" - I really wish my regular players would after all these years finally learn to back down when the odds are against them!

Things I have considered and left off:

• Beer & Pretzels-style gaming: While I carter to casual gamers, my games take themselves seriously.
• Drama: While interesting characters and relationships do pop-up in my game, the games focus on the stories of the player characters.
• Frequent character death: I very briefly considered that. But it's just not true. It's a consequence of not backing down against superior odds. Also, I give the players usually multiple opportunities to escape death outside of combat.
• Non-combat: Just not true. The amount of combat is rather genre- and player-dependent.
• Player skill: I don't understand that debate... at all.