Comment on “Like the Spider”

A DM has to be able to tap into two distinct ways of creating. During design (and play) the DM must be decisive and committed to what he has already made: "My rules for such-and-such work as follows"; "The game's design, its ethos, contains this, and does not contain that"; "Your character cannot do that because..."

But as you describe in this post, he must also continually reappraise his design and play techniques, and sweep them away if better ideas have come, without worrying about how long the previous techniques were in use.

If all you do is decide, but you can't reappraise, you won't be able to expand the game to offer more types of gameplay or more nuance for existing game elements. Your game will become repetitive.

If you're always appraising and never deciding, you're unlikely to even get running the game at all because you're going to keep ripping up bits of your world or system. If you do run players, you're likely to be unable to make snap decisions and thus bog the game down.