You ain’t gonna like this one. Not only is it a load of Random Bulls$&%, but it’s also really bloggy, rambly bulls$&%. I can’t even do a Long, Rambling Introduction™ for fear it’ll just turn into more of the Bulls$&%. Further, this one won’t reach a conclusion. It’ll preview a conclusion. And the conclusion will happen… in January. But this article will end by asking you to draw your own conclusions first.
This is one of those organizing my thoughts things.
See, there’s a lot of crap swirling around my head lately. Mostly it’s about me. About my role as The Angry GM and what the hell I’m still doing as The Angry GM after a dozen years. And this all ties into that new direction I keep threatening to take in January. And I am moving in a new direction in January. But don’t worry too much about it. The differences are mostly in my head. You probably won’t notice the changes except on reflection.
I’ve been spinning my wheels for a while. Bouncing from topic to topic without any clear path or vision. Part of it’s that I kind of feel like I finished being The Angry GM four years ago when I published Game Angry: How to RPG the Angry Way. Basically, I wrote the definitive how to GM book so what else is left to say?
Yes, I know that sounds f$&%ing dumb. Just stick around until the end.
The thing is, however well I think I covered the basics, three things keep happening. Well, two-and-a-half things. First, people keep asking me to cover the basics. Even people who’ve been reading this s%$& for years keep asking me for solid advice about running games. Everyone just wants me to keep going deeper and deeper in depth on narration, adjudication, encounter management, campaign management, player management, and all the other day-to-day Game Mastering crap.
At the same time — and this is the half-thing — at the same time, new fans keep turning up on my site’s front page. And while they’re wowed by what see and recognize I’m clearly the best damned gamer to learn the art of GMing from, the dozen years’ worth of disorganized articles on every conceivable topic shat out at random isn’t approachable at all. My archives are a mess. And no amount of organizing s$&% will fix it. Because it’s the articles themselves — and the process by which they were written — that’s a mess.
The second of the two-and-a-half-things is that every article I write changes my viewpoint. Honestly, I’ve evolved more as a GM over my dozen-year stint as The Angry GM than over the entire two-and-change decades of running games that came before I launched the site. Even that book I wrote four years ago is kind of out-of-date.
Don’t get me wrong, my views haven’t changed radically. I ain’t going to start saying stupid bulls$&% like “fail forward” and “make sure everyone has fun.” I’m not going un-ban gnomes and bards. This is evolution, not corruption. I still believe in all the foundational things. It’s just the specifics have been refined and my views have grown more complex and more nuanced. That’s how s$&% happens.
And there are a few things I’ve said that I no longer agree with it.
And that’s why one part of my three-part plan for January is to get back to the basics. To revisit core GMing ideas and build an evergreen entry point for new — and existing — readers. I’m calling it Angry’s Essentials. I want to refine and perfect the GMing art. And adopt a clear, step-by-step approach so each topic flows into the next. And to keep it all organized. My goal’s to have a nice, twenty-four-lesson series anyone can read to run the least worst games they can.
I ain’t going to rehash the stuff I already said. I’m not just rewriting Game Angry here. Though I will be doing that too as a separate project. Rather, if you think of my book as an introductory, 100-level course — Introduction to Running Games — then Angry Essentials will be the 200-level, advanced course. It’ll follow the same syllabus but expand on the 100-level material.
And the reason I’m wasting a Bulls$&% article yammering about this s$&% is that the key to writing systematically is to understand what you’re trying to accomplish from the word go. So, if the point of my book was to get people behind the screen — to give them the basic skills they need to sit down and run a game — what’s the point of Angry Essentials?
Warning: Sudden Topic Change
Let’s talk about Critical Role.
More generally, let’s talk about Examples of Play. Because EoP are fast becoming the way to learn how to play and run RPGs.
Now, Examples of Play have always been important parts of the whole teaching GMs thing. Every edition of D&D — barring the original — used an EoP to introduce the game’s core concepts. And most modern TTRPGs start with a snippet of game script that claims to exemplify the RPG gameplay experience. At least, to show an idealized version of the RPG gameplay experience.
And now that the technology allows for it, Gamecasts — live streams, podcasts, recordings, etc. — are becoming the default means by which players learn just how RPGs work. And, really, Gamecasts are just glorified examples of play.
Yes, I know they aren’t real examples because professional voice actors and creative directors and waaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh; Critical Role sucks! It’s ruining everything! I’m done listening to that crap; stop being a f$&%wit.
Gamecasts are glorified, idealized examples of play. They effectively demonstrate just how an RPG works. They show the conversational nature of RPGs, the bouncing between narration and resolution, and even the weird tightrope the players walk between controlling their characters and being their characters.
Frankly, I’m all for that s$&%. But — hyperbolic, envy-driven pissing and moaning about Mark Mercer aside — Gamecasts — and Examples of Play in general — ain’t the be-all and end-all of game instruction. They aren’t really instructional at all. Gamecasts and EoPs provide helpful introductions and, honestly, that’s all players need, but there’s s$&% they can’t do. S$&% GMs desperately need and don’t realize they’re not getting.
Gamecasting isn’t unique to the TTRPG community. Gamecasts are also very popular among tabletop boardgamers. But the boardgaming community uses them a lot more effectively. Mainly because the leaders of the TTRPG industry don’t really know what the f$&% they’re doing. They lucked into the Gamecast thing and can only see Gamecasts as accidental, viral marketing. They sure as hell don’t know how to use them deliberately.
TTRPG Gamecasts aren’t really meant as teaching tools. They’re entertainment. People watch them not to learn how to play and run TTRPGs, but because they’re invested in the players, the characters, the setting, and the story. Basically, all the same reasons people watch any TV show or streaming series or whatever.
By contrast, there are several flavors of boardgaming Gamecasts. There’s Entertainment Gamecasts and there’s Instructional Gamecasts. And even those come in a couple of flavors. Some Instructional Gamecasts explain the game as it’s being played while others just present the rules so people don’t have to read the rulebook.
The point is, there are lots of ways to use Gamecasts: as entertainment in their own right, as examples of play, as supplemental game materials, and as substitute game materials.
Why am I yammering about this s$&%? Well, it’s definitely not because I want to start my own Gamecast series of supplemental game materials, even though that would be awesome and I’d be awesome at it. Rather, it’s because I’m interested in the s$&% that Examples of Play — and Entertainment Gamecasts — can’t demonstrate. S$&% no one’s learning anymore because Gamecasts and EoPs have totally replaced the rules.
Minutes to Learn, a Lifetime to Master
Honestly, it’s easy to run a TTRPG. Watch a single Example Gamecast, read the D&D Basic Rules PDF, and you can start running games. And do a decent job at it. Moreover, if you stick with it for a few years, you can get good at running games from there. Really good. Back in my day, all we had to go on was a single, written EoP and a rulebook. That’s how I started and now I’m the best damned GM that ever was.
The thing about GMing is that it’s an alchemy. It’s part science, part art, and part mysticism. There’s a lot to learn and a lot of it’s weird and counterintuitive and mysterious. The deeper you go, the deeper you find there is to go. And because GMing is wrapped up in entertainment and social interaction and human psychology, it’s all really subjective and emotional. Which means GMing relies heavily on intuition. On feeling connections rather than understanding them.
Really, GMing is the sort of thing you can only learn through experience and experimentation. That’s why the best way to get good at running games is to run a lot of bad games. That’s how it be.
That said, there’s s$&% to teach and learn. Even arts and alchemies have masters and students. And a good master can give a student a head start. Help them skip some of the early experiential, experimental, feeling-out bulls$&%. It’s a generational thing. Each generation of students can start a little further along the curve than the previous generation did, which means they can get a little farther before they retire or die.
My job — as an alchemical master — isn’t to make you a great GM. Instead, it’s to pass on enough of my wisdom, intuition, and experience so you can skip ahead and start experimenting and experiencing and exploring a little earlier. And while it’s important that I help you understand the whys and wherefores, there’s always a point you’ve just got to trust me.
I know this to be true because I spent years pursuing this truth but because this truth is subjective entertainment based on art and intuition, I can’t explain it all in rational, objective ways. You can either waste years repeating all the same experiments I did because you think I have the wrong conclusion, or you can take this wisdom I’m handing you and start your journey where mine ended and then surpass me.
Side note: it’s hard to pull this s$&% off when people are looking to prove you wrong at every turn.
Anyway, Examples of Play are valuable precisely because GMing’s an alchemy. They’re not as good as personal experience, but they’re better than written explanations. But Examples of Play can’t let you see inside the GM’s head.
The Alchemy of Game Mastery is all down to making good choices in ambiguous situations. When a player whose character has the right proficiencies says they want to pick the lock, the Game Master’s job is as easy as it’s ever gonna get. The GM only has to call for the right die roll and describe the result.
Except for all those whining GMs who keep overthinking this s$&%, of course.
It’s when the players do something that isn’t covered by the rules — like trying to remove the hinge pins and take the door off — or when the rules aren’t enough to handle the game world’s complexity — like during any social situation ever — that the Game Master’s got to be a Master Alchemist. The GM has got to make a choice. And that choice always takes one of three forms: “how can I adjudicate this action” or “how can I present this result” or “how does this result change the game’s world?”
Seriously, in the end, those are the only three questions you get to answer as a GM. Okay, there is one more question. But that’s a whole other thing. Don’t worry about it.
The point is, The Alchemy of Game Mastery is down to answering one or more of those three questions whenever the game’s rules provide an insufficient answer. And while it’s easy enough for anyone to come up with an answer to any of those three questions, it’s hard to come up with a good answer. Especially because there are no objective criteria by which to judge any of the infinite answers and declare them good. Let alone better or best.
Actually, there is no best. Trying to find the best answer is stupid.
When a great GM — or even a good GM — is stuck trying to answer such a question, they rely on the wisdom and intuition that comes from years of experience, natural talent, and a deep-seated understanding of what it means to be a Game Master. The GM comes up with an answer — a great one, a good one, or a merely satisfactory one — and they act on it and then they move the game on. All in the blink of an eye. Or the span of a potty break.
Being a Game Runner is easy. It’s mostly just executing rules and describing results. Anyone can do that s$&%. But being a Game Master is about what you do when the rules aren’t enough. And that’s down to intuition, wisdom, experience, and understanding.
What it Means to Be a Game Master
By now, you’re thinking, “yeah, I know this s$&%; this isn’t anything new. Hell, you’ve said it or implied it yourself a thousand different ways.” Or, if you’re not a jerk, you’re thinking, “wow, I think I knew this stuff intuitively, but I never looked at it this way consciously. Thanks for putting it into words.”
And you’re welcome. Thanks for not being a jerk.
The point of a 200-level GMing course — a practical course — is to share my wisdom, experience, and understanding. To help people move more quickly from Game Running to Game Mastering. But I brought up a really huge-a$& part of all this. Something game designers have been struggling with since someone first said, “I think we need to write a book that’s separate from the rules and explains how to referee all this s$&%.”
What does it mean to be a Game Master? What is the Game Master trying to do? What divides great GMs from terrible ones? Hell, what divides good GMs from mediocre GMs?
GMing books hem and haw and wish and wash all over this crap. The whole the GM is part referee and part storyteller and isn’t the players’ enemy and makes sure everyone has fun and has to be the players’ biggest fan thing and all the other, similar crap? That’s almost as ubiquitous as dancing around what even is a roleplaying game and how do you win? And saying, “it’s up to each person to find their own answer” or “the answer is different for everyone” is a f$&%ing copout.
It’s the game’s job — or the teacher’s — to provide a clear vision. A vision to which the game’s participants — or the teacher’s students — can align themselves. Because, GMing isn’t just a thing you feel out, it’s something you feel your way through. And you have to know what you’re feeling your way towards. Otherwise, you’re just groping s$&% in the dark. If you don’t know where you’re going, you won’t get anywhere.
Most of the answers RPGs provide are behavioral. They focus on what the GM does. And what the players do. They’re not visionary. They don’t aim the GM toward anything. And you can say that’s so each GM can find their own direction, but that’s a lie and it’s a crappy answer besides.
It’s a lie because most designers don’t actually try to figure out what, on a philosophical and visionary level, a GM actually is. Because everyone already knows what a GM does. Hell, you know what a GM does, don’t you? I do. RPG designers do. And that’s the important thing, right? If I tell you what to do and you do it, you’ll get where you’re supposed to.
It’s a crappy answer because vision’s a vitally important part of intuitive, experimental, experiential alchemies. You need a vision so you know how to answer the questions you have to answer. You need an example of mastery so you know what to pursue. But as a neophyte, you don’t have the experience and context to come up with a vision of your own. Your early vision of mastery must come from somewhere. It can’t come from you.
While visions are vitally important, they’re also easy to refine or revise or reject and replace. When an apprentice graduates to journeyman and starts experimenting with the craft on their own way to mastery, part of that journey is refining or redefining their vision of mastery. And their vision of the alchemy itself.
The point is, everyone needs a vision to aim at, but neophytes can’t invent their own. A teacher — or a system — must provide neophytes with a vision. With, of course, the understanding that, as the neophyte approaches mastery, they’ll replace that received vision with a more personal one. But it takes a long time to get there.
So What Does it Mean to Be a Game Master
Ultimately, all this bulls$&% comes down to one vitally important question. A question that most definitely lacks a single, correct answer. But a question that most definitely has many wrong, stupid answers. And one that also has many seductive answers that look like correct answers, but that lead to wrong, stupid places.
What does it mean to be a Game Master? What does a good GM look like? What separates a Game Master from a Game Runner?
That’s the question. If you can’t answer that question, you’ve got no business teaching anyone anything. And you’ve certainly got no business designing roleplaying games. And the answer must be a clear, concise statement of vision. The more clear and more concise the vision, the better. The answer’s got to be a motivation, not a list of behaviors. It has to drive choices.
In other words, until I can provide a clear and simple ideal that separates Running Games from Mastering them, I can’t teach you anything else. Because I’ve got nothing against which to weigh my lessons and advice. And because that vision — that ideal — provides the first assumption for every argument I make. And if you reject my Vision of True Game Mastery — and it’s fine if you do — my advice — my wisdom — won’t do you much good. And arguing about the quality of my advice won’t get us anywhere. It’s like this:
You: I don’t think your advice will get me where I want to be.
Me: My advice will get you to that place there; is that where you want to be?
You: No, I want to be in that place over there.
Me: You’re right, then. My advice won’t get you there. You need a different teacher.
The very first thing I’m going to do with Angry Essentials is to tell you what I think it means to be a Game Master. And to explain how I came up with that answer and why I know it’s right. But that’s more than a month away. Today, I’m leaving the question unanswered. Why?
Well, it’s partly because I like f$&%ing with you but it’s partly because I want you to think about this question yourself first. To reflect on your own Game Mastering. To see if there’s a Vision of Game Mastering that underlies your decisions or if you’ve just got a list of behaviors. To see if you can find a Vision in those behaviors. And to see if you like that Vision.
And maybe to compare your Vision to the one I eventually reveal. Because maybe I’m not the Master Game Master for you. That’s okay.
This might stump you. That’s okay too. It takes a lot of insight, intuition, wisdom, and experience to develop a clear, concise statement of vision. You might not be ready to do that yet. Maybe it’ll take you a month to come up with something. And maybe what you come up with isn’t really a final answer, just one that’s good enough for now. One to refine and redefine over the years.
For now, think about it. Come up with an answer if you can. In January, I’ll give you the right answer.
Thank you Angry and I am looking forward to where this leads. Homework is interesting but definitely value add. Curiosity got the better of me (based on this article) so I went and watched the 5e walk through for new DMs… I grew up with D&D (3d6 in order AD&D) so “owwww”….
I don’t see how the Essentials series will be evergreen, unless you are planning to go back and update them as and when your understanding evolves?
Coming at this with a bit of a background in poker (which has a few similarities), wherein the motto that drives difficult decisions (decisions to which the correct answer is unknown, and the long term best answer may also be unknown or extremely difficult to determine) for me is: “play as close to perfect as possible,” – in other words, try to play as close as you can to the way you would play if everyone’s cards were face up – here are my thoughts: “The GM should try to be as unnoticeable as possible during play.”
That is to say: every decision the GM makes should seem so natural to the context that the characters would have probably predicted it. Note that this is not the same as following the rules like a computer. It encompasses things that only the human brain can handle, it takes into account the players and the story/genre/tone, and it makes the rules into tools (with the GM’s goal to use/apply them in exactly the way that would be expected). It applies to narration in the sense that the narration should mimic – as closely as possible – the thoughts characters would actually experience as they enter a new room or setting. This applies to time spent talking and attention to detail, and depends on context. (When a character thinks “I didn’t notice the bag of gemstones on the table because I was too busy looking at the ogre, with the great axe, who was trying to kill me…” this should map to the fact that the GM intentionally never mentioned the bag to the player.)
Perhaps another way to say this is that the goal is to minimize the presence of “players” at the table, by creating an experience that feels as much as possible like there are only characters (whose brain space is inhabited by the players) and a world.
I REALLY like this.
I love the idea of Angry Essentials, as it will make it a lot easier to find things and recommend them to people who disagree with me about how to GM.
But I’m curious… what’s wrong with bards? 😀
That’s how people get sitebanned. :sarcasm:
Good question. It’s very likely that Angry has answered it somewhere, but I can’t help you with that.
If I’m to guess, it’s probably not that the very concept of someone who does magic the way people in real mythologies did magic (e.g. Norse galðr, or walking into Hades while playing a lute, or sounding trumpets around city walls until they fall down) is inherently wrong. There’s a lot wrong with D&D bards both at thematic and gameplay levels, but I doubt it’s got more to do with magic music being a bad concept than with the problems of D&D’s magic system itself.
My vision of being a game master is to coordinate a tabletop RPG, bringing a group of people together to play a game of pretend heroes battling pretend monsters and solving pretend problems as a form of leisure. A good GM combines improv, creativity, planning, and judgement to create an engaging world that the players can immerse themselves in so that everyone enjoys their time together regardless of their character’s success or failure.
Nice answer. Forgive me for being slightly cynical, but the second part could be rewritten as: a good GM has to use their improvisation skills, creative skills, planning skills and adjudication skills to make sure everyone has fun… which is completely valid, but kind of too broad.
Don’t take me bad. The first part of your answer is miles ahead of my own non-existing one and well written. Thinking about this first part of your answer as a basis to create my own, I feel there is still one one thing missing: what’s my own feeling of reward, what do I want to achieve.
It feels too mechanical: “I coordinate a social event where a group of people battle monsters and solve puzzles as a hobby”. Maybe the reward is intrinsic, it’s the pleasure of making it all work, of being able to provide fun to everyone, of being able to improve these people lives… I really don’t know.
There is still this thing missing when I try to reach my own answer: What do I want from all that, on an emotional level? I can’t grasp it yet.
I don’t know that my reward is part of being a good GM. I get a lot of things out of the game that ARE solely for my benefit. I can spend hours building maps for fun, and sure the players seem to like shiny maps, I also know line drawings do the job. For me, the top reason for playing is to spend time with my friends doing something we all enjoy. After that, it’s about making a story framework and seeing how my players interact with it. I have the most fun when I am surprised, and when my players are enjoying themselves.
Watch the critical role animated series on [Amazon Prime] to see everything wrong with bards and gnomes(simultaneously).
I’ve always cringed at the notion of a group of fantasy adventurers fighting it out in mortal combat while the bard sat back and played the flute during all of it. like bloody well contribute here!
Good. I’ll buy it. You write good. I like your mix of hubris and vulnerability. It reminds me of me.
I’ve been mulling this over and think I have found mine:
What does it mean to be a Game Master?
A Game Master leads and elicits an empathetic experience recounted as a coherent story.
What does a good GM look like?
Looks have nothing to do with it… but the abilities displayed are communication with each and all, adjudication consistency across all, and elicitation from each… of the players.
What separates a Game Master from a Game Runner?
A Game Master does all three in a seamless engagement creating an experience related as a coherent story. A Game Runner has seams and/or one or more abilities that require noticeable improvement resulting in an experience related as story with noticeable exceptions in coherency.
By my own definition, I am a Game Runner… but I’m trying Ringo, I’m trying real hard…
Speaking as one of those new readers going through the archives, I really appreciate your perspective, and hope that things like the Tension Pool will help me run less worse games. I’ve noticed, though, that some of the links leading to outside pages (like the Google Drive and the Angry Rants) now seem to be broken. Is one of the January items rehosting those resources on your own page?
Also, whatever happened to Oran Ionath? Even if you got tired of writing about it, did it ever get finished? Really liked “Silverpine” and would love to see the finished megadungeon.
Thanks!
Re: Bards and Gnomes, I think he mentioned excluding options during character building trains players to ask the DM instead of check a book. In game, that helps run the game he wants.
Re What is a gm: I guess “An RPG “runner” that, through the game, presents a world with challenges, consistency, and adventure their players enjoy.”
Bards and gnomes suck. I don’t remove them just to have something to remove.
You have an article on that?
It’s self evident. No need to waste 5000 words on it.
Haha. I’m not a fan of gnomes, I’ll confess to playing a bard once.
Bards and gnomes are silly. There you have it.
For the gnomes see third answer here: https://theangrygm.com/bicycles-agency-and-gnomes/
Thank you. I forgot I wrote that.
I can’t wait to read Angry’s concise but also 3000 word article which answers that question
I already regret typing that. I was just mulling over answering that question and was getting hard on myself about the conciseness when the above thought occurred to me. Like many of your hypothetical readers, I am probably too hard on myself.
It’s human to be hard on yourself. And useful, because it leads to self improvement. But also, it leads to depression. So be hard on yourself the way you’d be hard on your best friend: someone you just want the best for, and someone you don’t want to hurt.
And if you figure out how to actually DO THAT, let me know. Because I sure as hell can’t.
My memories of confusion that drove me into looking for a site like this in the first place were all about a lack of vision. I know I wanted a big experience where the player felt elated because they accomplished something real and had become invested in the concepts I presented. But at any given moment of running the game, I didn’t know what intermediary experiences I needed to provide to get that end result. Moments would come up in the game and I would feel like I didn’t have any content planned. But it was worse than that, I didn’t have any vision for how those moments could matter.
If a role playing game is players taking the mindset of some character and figuring out how they respond to different stimuli to achieve their individual goals while allowing those goals to change over time, then a GMs job is to design a series of stimuli (usually challenges) that force players into interesting dilemmas or opportunities that allow them to invest in their character or accomplish meaningful goals.
First time commenting, mainly because I’d like to be able to look back on this and see how wrong I was once January rolls around.
A game master is someone who creates a world that has challenges for the players inside of it. The types of worlds a game master creates and their subsequent challenges depend on the type and skill of a game master.
A good game master ensures that the challenges matter in the right way. If a challenge doesn’t matter to the world, it’s an obstacle. If it doesn’t matter to the players, it’s an annoyance. If it matters to nothing, it’s worthless.
The difference between a game runner and a game master is that the master understands the different levels of this concept at each point. The challenge, reward, and consequences at a momentary and overarching level matter to the game master. A game runner knows how to resolve an action and how to end a story, but a game master understands how close the two of these are in a game.
To me, GMing would fall into 2 seperate parts, obviously there is the technical side of running the game, learning/knowing the mechanics or learning new ways to use the mechanics and growing improv and story telling aspects. All the “going-about-actually-running-the-game” stuff.
Then on the flip side, to me running TTRPG’s I try to approach like I did when playing video games years ago when video games were more of a “friends-get-together-to-play” thing. I loved just making memories in game or during games with friends that we could be like “Oh damn, do you remember when we did X or Y?”
So to me, a vision of what I believe GMing is is being able to tell the story I wish to tell, while continuing to learn and grow my understanding of mechanics, while creating memories, or helping to create memories for my players and myself. Also helping to impart some wisdom while running games to players to maybe inspire them to learn how to run games.
Maybe I’m rambling, maybe I’ve missed the point here, but the inner reflective nature has shown me what I want to strive for and maybe that will be enough, or maybe this comment will make someone else go “yer, actually I feel like that too”, and that’s 1 step closer to teaching and having someone else learn and grow.
A good game master is very similar to a good host of a party. That is my approach.
Let’s try : A game master is someone creating an sharing a world that is credible, and interesting enough, for players to believe they can, and want to, interact with.
A good GM is transparent, meaning that you forgot he exists, because you only see the world shared with the player – as in a movie, you are no longer seeing the screen, or the seat in front of you.
A game ruler will play the rule, and create the PNJ, but is not able to make the player believe the world exist.
“Wow, I think I knew this stuff intuitively, but I never looked at it this way consciously. Thanks for putting it into words.”
Jokes aside, I have actually given some consideration to the subject before, and my mind drifts towards it from time to time. I’ve been feeling, for some time, a lack of practical excercises to develop my GMing skills. Things I could do besides of running games, and if possible alone. Your blog is great Angry, but it’s mostly theoretical. I need exercises at the end of each chapter.
This has led me to give up on the answer to “what is a GM” and changed to “what constitutes a GM”. Instead of using an analytical approach (understand GM and then determine what skills I need to develop) I’m now trying for a synthetic approach (determine if a certain skillset is useful to a GM, and from these skills synthetize the perfect GM). I’ve done this because defining a GM is hard, but there are a couple of things that I know a good GM must be able to do.
So far I have a small list of skills that I’m sure are required, and a few that are useful, but not required. The list is sure to be incomplete. Maybe if I actually started to practice instead of just looking at the list occasionally it would help me to complete it eventually.
To clarify through a comparison. Instead of meditating on “what is a good football player” and trying to make a plan to reach that, I’m going with “I’ve no idea what exactly a good football player is, but I’m damn sure he needs a good stamina”. And then I can trace an exercise plan to run 10km daily in order to become a better player.
“A good GM” is too abstract for me. “Must be good at visualizing a situation” and “must be capable of transmitting information in a concise and unambiguous way” are concrete, actionable, trainable skills.
Interesting question. Here’s my first attempt at a response: A good GM plus a well-designed rule system makes the rule system disappear from player experience. The player can just blurt or deliberate on actions characters take in a world, hear how the world changes in light of actions (initially non-fully, with the possibility of discovering further consequences), and repeat, focusing entirely on what’s happening in the game world.
Two follow up musings, if permitted. 1.) It’s to make the ‘because’ of game events filled out in game world terms—because spotted bones and made connection with trap, rather than because rolled a 15— that you’d want to have rules disappear. 2.) You’d have rules rather than just GM to take some outcomes out of ‘storyteller’s’ hands.
When I see the question “what separates a game master from a game runner?” my instinct is to answer “ownership”. I’m DMing two games right now: one with a group I’ve been in for a long time where we rotate DMing, the other with mostly newbies and never-DMs. I feel in the former I’m acting as a game runner; I strive to follow the rules mechanically, I defer more often to group interpretations of rules. In the latter, I strive for what makes sense for the fiction, what makes the most natural or instinctive sense — I even choose to roll for the monsters’ hit points to give them variation so I can say “this is a big one, this is a wimpy one, these are the twins” and I switch out weapons and equipment for monsters. I know I don’t have to do that, but it helps me see the monsters as more than statblocks
A game-runner, facilitates the game happening. They help to make sure that the appointed people show up, at the appointed time, at the appointed place, with the appointed gaming aids. A game-master is frequently a game-runner as well, but they don’t have to be. Players can organize stuff too.
An rpg player plays the role of a fictional character. The game-master plays the role of all the fictional elements that are not the player-characters. Ideally this means the game-master sets the stage. Invites the players to action. Responds to those actions. And continues to supply input to keep the momentum going.
Rpg game rules, are tools that help the players understand how they can act, and act as impartial arbitrator of those actions. Good game rules should be predictable, but not too predictable.
Successful applications of these elements, should result in an interesting story being told. Getting things out of order, or focusing too much on one element, will distort the experience. It may not be bad, but that doesn’t make it good.
I’m starting my career as agame designer, and one of the greatest GD of my country once told me “Treat every game as a short story of some simple people in a small world”
Crafting a successful game is the art of crafting a story worth to be told, as small, short and simple it could be.
In my humble opinion, a Game Runner become a Game Master the moment it starts crafting tools, rules and content for a story ready to be discovered and to be told togheter
I’m gonna start with the third question because it seems the most straightforward to me.
My first instinct would be design; a Game Runner runs the game, the Game Master designs it and then runs it. But then the line would become way too blurry; even while running the game, you’ll inevitably have to improvise (and as a sexy gaming genius once said, improvising is designing and running at the same time).
So my answer (influenced perhaps by the end of the article) would be having their own Vision as opposed with following someone else’s. By Vision I mean a total description of your game and all its parts. Having a Vision would mean answering all questions about the game: ie what emotions should my players feel?/how hard should the game be?/what themes should I lean on? etc
The archetypal GR would be running published adventures as written; although in reality they don’t print a full Vision in the intro of the book, mostly because it’s really an emergent thing and it’s hard to pinpoint. So you’d have to infer it from the design and descriptions (if there even is a coherent Vision) and try to run in a way to implement it, kind of like following directions from someone who doesn’t speak your language very well.
Which then leads me to the other two questions.
A GM would be a Game Runner with their own Vision, who designs elements that fit their Vision and then runs them in a way that accomplishes the objectives they set themselves.
Since your Vision is pretty much a collection of your prefences and wants for the game you’re running, while they can be wrong for a group it cannot be “bad” in a meaningful, objective way.
So a “good” GM would be evaluated simply on their ability to implement their Vision; for example a GM who’s good at spooky would be able to consistently spook their players; a GM bad at spooky wouldn’t, be it because of design mistakes/running mistakes/both.
What then would make a “Great” Game Master to me, would be the ability to implement very different Visions extremely well.
Now the issue is that this all lives in the Hyperuranium plane of bullshit ideas™ and I have no idea how to put it in practical terms.
Really sorry for blogging in the comments, this turned into a very long one.
Looking forward to Essentials, I’m a sucker for a cliffhanger!
Hmm…
To me, a Game Master is exactly what it sounds like: a master of the game. They exert mastery over the world and rules and table in order to facilitate a shared emotional experience with the other players.
A good GM speaks with authority, is confident in their decisions yet lacks hubris, is swift to admit when they have erred and to correct such error, is able to read the mood of the other players, is fair, generously rewards overcoming adversity, and communicates clearly with the other players.
A game runner is just someone who runs the game, yet lacks mastery over it. They might or might not facilitate an enjoyable experience. Mastery is not a flawless understanding of the rules, of course. A game runner might know them front to back, perhaps better than many GMs. But what the game runner lacks is that ephemeral quality of authority that inspires respect in other players.
I think, at least. Maybe I’m totally off-base.
I personally think a competent GM can create a fun game but a great GM also runs an engaging one. That’s the kind of game that sticks in a players head even when they’re not at the table because they’re contemplating what happened, and what they should do next.
Also I’ve never liked gnomes, but I could go either way on Bards.
To me, at least part of the answer is that a Great Game Master is an enabler. He (or she) enables the players to visualize the current situation and he empowers them to deal with it creatively (but plausibly within the world).
An empowering game master describes the world in a way that makes options (mor or less) apparent to players and is rich enough that players may even find options the Game Master did not think about. If they do, the GM will not hinder the players in trying the out (unless they are outrageously implausible or unless hobbits or dwarves are thrown around).
An empowering game master thus gives the players agency. Ideas like “fail forward” also go in this direction – even a failure should not make the players feel powerless or unable to go on or make new decisions.
The empowering GM also designs the games that different player types (like explorers, those who like fights etc) will all be enabled to play their style and will find the challenges that are of interest to them.
Phrased differently, the task of the GM is not to make sure that players have fun, but to run the game so that the players are enabled to seek (and find) their fun according to their taste.