Looking for a DnD game that uses either 3.5 or Pathfinder rules.  It can either be a homebrew setting, the Forgotten Realms, or Athas.  I don't want to learn another setting like Eberron or Pathfinder.  The Underdark is also another possibility.

I would really like for it to be gritty, dark, hot, smoky, and thick in the look and feel, if that makes sense.  Generally speaking, I have been told that my style of play is low magic, low power, low puzzle, low tech, medium fantasy, high espionage, and high mortality of the scrubby mc-scrub scrubs.  This is negotiable, but it is very important for me to know where the GM is taking it and what sort of story they are trying to tell.  I hate guess work.  I hate sitting around and talking for 32 posts.  Don't worry so much about trying to keep things interesting by trying to surprise me.  I do a lot better job as a writer (and a player) if I know what I am supposed to be doing.  Solving a mystery isn't so fun to me if I can't figure it out or I keep failing dice rolls.

I would prefer for the game to be 6-8th level, room to go to about level 10, and a lot of moral grey areas.  I do not want to deal with undead (ESPECIALLY ZOMBIES), and I do not want there to be "Cutesie" villains and monsters.  No, a Goblin Warchief is not a challenge.  It's a scrub that gets punted across the room no matter how awesome it is.  It's cool, not kewl.  It's might makes right, not little wimpy elf boi gets to cast spells and so he's powerful.

Does that make sense?  I hope so, heh.

It should be Adult, but Mature can work too.  It is negotiable.

It can be a solo game or a group game.  I am open to either.  BUT!!!  If it is a group game, I am going to make it a requirement that I am the final arbitrator in what the other player characters in the group are.  About a year and a half ago, a GM set a game up specifically for me, but gave me no say in what the other party members were, and soon I ended up with a player who insisted on playing an elf wizard even though I made a point to say that being a wizard meant he was the expendable one, and the GM pointed out that being an elf was a bad thing.  There was an alchemist who described himself as looking mummified, a bard who didn't want to travel with "the party" and do her own thing, and a dwarf cleric who was fine, except he wasn't willing to reveal anything about his background, or to put any work into the story of how and why.  I ended up abandoning the game shortly after that.  How bad is it when you abandon a game that was set up specifically for you?

I would like to add, before closing, that I am vocal and verbose.  I am more interested in writing a good story.  I am not expecting you the GM to write up a whole, long, drawn out campaign all on your own.  Negative on that.  Use me as your point of reference.  If you come up with something, like say, random halfling #7 wants me to go into a temple and retrieve an amulet from the ghouls there, and I say I don't care about that and am not going to do it, I don't like it and the response should be to avoid it, not try and convince me it's a good idea.  If I am clearly trying to hurry something along, like getting from point A to point B that's 3 days and 2 nights worth of traveling on a horse and the only encounter is going to be a passing wagon full of bards, then yeah, the scene should be expedited.  You can mention the bards in a summary and we can keep going.  On the flip side, if you just had me clean out a den of thieves, and you just randomly made one of them a dark elf woman in a slave collar, but I stop and take 6 posts dealing with her before deciding to hand her over to the authorities, then I probably liked her and giving her some more attention would be a good idea.

In summary to the above mentioned nature of your relationship as the GM, your "job" so to speak, is to host a game where you are more of a referee that responds to me by way of writing in an attempt to help me tell a good story.  The goal isn't to tell me what I can and can't do through a variety of challenges.  No.  The goal is to make what I want to do happen.

Are you the GM up for that task?

Let me know and thanks for your time in advance!

I'd be willing to be your DM. I ask only 200 dollar per session. I want a paid holiday every 3 months to a country of my choosing. I expect written story requests a minimum of 2 weeks prior to implementation into the story. In triplicate. Rules negotiations will be done through my lawyer.

I think the above responder was a bit rude, but he has a point. Your vast list of requirements are tedious can easily lead to being unfun for others. I'd only run something like that if I was getting paid.

That said, I would do it if you paid me.

Couple quick points on that.  First, you'd have to prove you were worth paying.  Second, if you think that's a long list of requirements, you're clearly not worth paying. ;P After being around RPOL as long as I have been, it's best to be up front about things like this.  Everyone knows exactly what they're getting into.  They know exactly what is expected of them, and there is no mistake made regarding what is and isn't wanted.  You, the prospective GM can't be aggravated when you decide random cave #307 is populated with zombies and I say, "Zombies?  Nope.  We'll be doing something different."  Or when you decide to add new players, and random elf wizard #400 doesn't understand why he isn't being welcomed with open arms I can come right out and say, "Look, you shouldn't have been added in the first place.  I'd have picked the orc barbarian."

This is a vetting process.  It's me vetting you before anything gets started.  If you think this is too problematic for you, fine.  Don't respond.  If it's beyond your ability, too demanding, or too bold and up front instead of "diplomatic" or whatever, fine.  Don't respond.  I'm not looking for a scrubby GM who has only ever hosted 3 games that crash within 3 months.  The GM who responds to this and takes it seriously is going to be a GM with some longevity, who has games with longevity, who takes their games seriously.  They're going to be a GM who reads this, reads between the lines, and goes, "This is going to be Soooo easy!  This dude knows exactly what he wants.  There's no guesswork.  He isn't going to need to be led around by his nose.  All I really need to do is write interesting posts!"

It isn't a case of having requirements that is seen as negative, it is the type and specificity of the requirements that is seen as negative.

You are basically asking to be gm with a gmpc that is the center of everything, and maybe whoever you recruit into being co-gm/players might get a word in edge-wise.

And yes, you are trying to be gm "...way of writing in an attempt to help me tell a good story." The job of the gm is to tell a good story. A player is the one the story happens to. Ergo, you wanting to tell a good story, is you wanting to gm the game.

Makes me wonder, why do you even want another gm at all?

Why don't you just write a book, or use story building cards and dice to fill in the blanks?

Or even just be the gm all by yourself?

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Also, you presume much about longevity. Not all games are intended to be long. Some gms run only a single scenerio/module at a time, leading to lots of short games (most of the pf scenerios can be shorter than 3 months on pbp). That doesn't mean they take the game less seriously.

How long have you been on RPOL?  How many games have you joined and seen all the way to completion?  How many games have you tried to join and then not made the cut for?  Or how many games have you joined and then abandoned because they just weren't what you were looking for?

The difference between being the GM and being a player who is specific with what they want is that when you're the GM, players join a game you create, right?  You get this idea, you decide to run with it, and the players do exactly what you want, or they're supposed too, right?  But at lot of times they don't, and things go whacky somewhere.  Right?  Now when you're the player, you comb through the games and you hope you'll find something you like, but it's a crap shoot.  You have next to no idea what the other players are going to be, or be like, or how the group is going to be made up.  You often have very little say in anything that happens.

So what happens when you are a GM who has GM'd a lot of games, and you have longevity on the site, you know exactly what you like and don't like, but are tired of being the host who has to write all of the NPCs, steering the PCs in the right direction, start every thread, respond 5 times as often because you have to write 5 posts for every post the players do, and frankly just want to sit back and not play guesswork with what the PCs are going to do, or want to try and do next?

So what happens when you are a player who is tired of not getting a game that lasts more than a couple months?  Or your tired of getting a game where you think the posts are going to be amazing only to find that every other day there is 20 new 3 line posts?  Or you're a player who thinks things are going amazing and then around the corner are anime-esque zombie clown chickens?  What happens when you are a player who can't find a game you like no matter how much you relax your standards?

The solution is to combine the two.  Or at least that's my theory here.

Think like a GM.  Set your standards from the beginning.  Be specific with what you want to do, don't want to do, etc.  But then approach it like a player as well.  It doesn't hurt to ask if there's anyone out there who sees what you're looking for and goes, "You know what?  I can totally do that!"  My theory still stands.  Someone sees my list of "demands" as has been so colorfully pointed out, and then realizes that a lot of the painful aspects of being a GM is handled, and all they've got to do is be a referee of sorts, and be a decent writer in their approach.

If it doesn't work, there are two more things to try.  I can either be a little more lenient, opening things up just a bit more and more until it does work for someone else, or, write a module, and then see if someone else wants to try and run it.  Writing modules takes years, at least from what I've heard by people who use them.  I don't.  I never have.  But they are apparently, quite popular.

I understand where you are coming from. I've been on the site about half as long as you, but I get the feeling. It can be frustrating to find the right game, and then you think maybe you are asking too much and compromise, and compromise, then you need to compromise some more, and eventually you are expected to be a puppet just for the privilege of playing. Then when you are a DM you want to be supportive, to enable players to get what they want and to be as good as you can be because you don't want to do to others what you don't like being done to you. But it only highlights that things are all give and not get. It is like a kind of sense of unfairness that eats you away little by little. There comes a point where you just feel owed to have it your way, even if just for once. (And I'm really tired of games where everybody refuses to interact with each other too. I'd rather play a solo game, and I don't like solo games)

I could run something for you if you think I'm up to the task. Check my three active games -one has been running for a few years now with a steady if a little slow pace- and PM me if you need lurker access to any of them. They are The blood verses, The dying days and The hoard, the race. You may notice they are quite different from each other, because I try to adapt to the players instead of forcing them into adapting to me.

In case you want this, we will need to set a few ground rules about what you expect need and don't want in the game. In this way you can have a say in what other PCs get to play, for example no wizards, or wizards but they have x,y,z limits. Or you can choose to go solo, that is a possibility too. If you decide you want me to DM for you, I would appreciate you returning the favor -I have a couple of games I'm looking for-. I am more or less in the same situation.

I don't think you've ever had a good gm.

Good gms don't worry about what the players will do.
Good gms don't steer the players.
Good gms have no need to puppeteer the pcs.
Good gms don't play guesswork because the answers don't matter.
Good gms find the tedious or troublesome (no such thing as painful) aspects handled by the game system, except for one (pbp only btw), which is judging prospective players for how long they will hang around and whether they will be a disruption (strangely these issues almost never exist in a rl game).
As rl games run successfully with no choice in players (you get who is available period), game success doesn't generally depend on the players, it depends on the gm.
Good gms don't see the game as give or get, they see it as an interaction.

You have not had a good gm, and the problems caused by poor gming you are trying to fix by taking control yourself, but a poor gm is still a poor gm. What you need is good gm, which is a rare find. Worse, many poor gms have no idea they are poor gms and they often want to do things a good gm never does (like tell a story that makes assumptions about what the players will do).

Good gming is an art that requires great skill. Most don't understand the art and lack the skill. Oftentimes treating the role of gm as being an author.

A good gm isn't just an author of a story, they are the world, they are fate. Neither dictates nor relies on what pcs choose to do.

To answer your specific questions plus a little, I've gm'd for over 15 years, only a few years on rpol but that has been almost entirely test play games. I've only played a couple that were true games on rpol, one still going. I've only quit one game ever (and that was a rl game). I've played several games on paizo, most successfully are pfs scenerios.