Is godmodding all that bad?

I’m hoping to get a discussion going in the comments here. What are your opinions about godmodding?

I’ve seen games fall apart, and arguments caused because of a player godmodding (if you don’t know what godmodding is, see here). But I’ve also seen plenty of people realise their mistakes and learn from it, making them a better roleplayer and a better storyteller afterwards. After all, it’s boring when a character gets what they want straight away, it’s more fun to make them fail a few times first right? (I wrote an article about that here).

Godmodding can get lumped in with metagaming, and also Mary Sues, and the differences are sometimes too subtle to even mention (maybe write your opinions in the comments below). A while ago Crymsyn wrote an article for us titled “Metagaming is good” (read it here) which argued that as writers we need to know where the story’s going to make it better, and that we have to sacrifice a bit of realism for a cohesive story.

Anyway, I know metagaming is not equal to godmodding, but just thought it was worth mentioning. Maybe godmodding has an upside too? Have you ever had to do a bit of godmodding to get your character out of a sticky situation? Or to perhaps keep the story flowing?

Discuss in the comments and let us know if you’ve been guilty of godmodding in the past, or how you’ve dealt with godmodders in your game.