The RPG-Designer GM
GM: “And now, we move on to the climax of the adventure….for which I have written some special rules. Have a quick flick through, they won’t take long to learn, honest.” (Hands everyone a 100-page rule supplement)
Players: “We go home”
The 2d6 GM
Player 1 (Plate Mail clad Half-Ogre Fighter with 6 dexterity): “I try to leap the burning chasm”
GM: “Roll 2d6….high good, low bad”
Player 2 (Leather clad Elven Rogue with 20 dexterity): “OK I do the same.”
GM: “Roll 2d6….high good, low bad”
The “Cold, Cold, Cold” GM
GM: “The bad guy legs it into the forest, carrying with him the Orb of Unfeasible Importance. You lose him.”
Players: “Well, we’ve got a Ranger a Barbarian and a Druid in our party. We use all our woodland skills and try to track him.”
GM: “The trail seems to have gone cold.”
Players: “OK, the cleric casts ‘Locate Object’. He hops on the flying carpet with the mage and flies over the forest trying to locate the Orb.”
GM “Cold.”
Players: “The mage uses Detect Thoughts as well.”
GM: “Cold, cold, cold.”
The above caricatures were coined to describe the three main GMs in our group and our respective annoying traits. (And they are caricatures - it was only 30 pages, dammit!).
All of these styles of refereeing have something to offer but can be taken too far. Rules are good for consistency and this helps the sense of immersion but when they become too dominant they stifle creativity and bog down the flow of the game. Being too lazy to use a rules framework and just determining things by handwaving judgement calls or an extremely rules-light approach makes for fast gameplay but does a disservice to character diversity - for what’s the point of taking pains to develop a distinctive character if the GM can’t be bothered to let them exercise their distinctive talents? - and can be immersion-breaking. Lastly, a pre-written adventure plot that the characters are powerless to influence de-protagonizes them and relegates them to the role of passengers on the GM’s story train (I can think of a fair few published 2nd edition AD&D modules that actively endorsed this approach).
In my refereeing I try to maintain a balanced approach. I know that different players enjoy different styles of refereeing and I try to make sure there’s something for everyone. I do like making up rules that I can fall back on to structure the game, because I tend not to work very well as a spontaneous GM (though I have my occasional moments of spontaneous flair and flourish). I tend to prep a lot too, and often wind up using about 1/4 of what I’ve prepared (the rest is either recycled or kept on ice for if the party ever returns to the adventure site). But I’ve learned from my mistakes and I curb my enthusiasm for rules-writing these days - introducing them in bite-sized chunks and never mid-adventure.
It’s often said that the most perfect face (in terms of attractiveness) is made up of a composite of many attractive faces. Maybe the most perfect GM would result by taking the characteristics of many great GMs and blending them together….
Some other kinds of GM - ones that we might not want to include in the composite Perfect GM:
The Antagonist GM whose goal is to ‘win’ against the party.
The Unoriginal GM whose adventure plots always bear a startling resemblance to the latest fantasy novel they’ve read.
Maybe someone should write a taxonomy or a classification chart or something. If there isn’t one out there already. (Don’t look at me).
So, what kind of GM are you?
This entry was posted on Friday, January 16th, 2009 at 6:11 am and is filed under Tabletop RPG. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
January 16th, 2009 at 8:43 am
I’m not really sure. I think the people who play with me would be a better judge of that than I would.
January 16th, 2009 at 9:48 am
@ Bonemaster: Interesting that you should say that. The three caricatures were commentary by one of our players. He did some stick-figure cartoon strips to go with them. I think I had a copy of them but they’re buried somewhere.
January 16th, 2009 at 11:30 am
I like 2d6-guy the best. As long as I could imagine that he was looking for my Elf to beat 6, while looking for the Fighter to beat 8, I could stick with that campaign.
I guess as a GM I’m 2d6-guy, except I tell the players in advance what number they have to beat depending on their circumstances.
January 16th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
My players are the weak, and I am the tyranny of evil men. But I’m trying really hard to be the shepherd.
Which is a funny quote, but sorta true. Early in my GMing career I was an antagonistic GM, as are most 13-year-olds. Later I became a Cold GM, which is really just a GM who is trying too hard to preserve the plot that they came up with. Then I played a lot of Vampire with a really good spontaneous GM, and I learned a lot about that style.
These days I still do a lot of pre-adventure prep, but most of it is optional stuff. I try to avoid railroading, and don’t really get that attached to my plot outline anymore. So you could say that in my mind, I’m a composite GM. A lot of it is practice, exposure to other styles and constantly requesting feedback from your players. It’s a skill, after all. And you gotta invest time and work in a skill.
January 16th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
@ Joshua - There are plenty of players who are happy with that style too. And I do use it on occasion myself when things need to be kept snappy. Like last night, when there was a question of whether someone’s torch got extinguished. You can’t break out the physics textbooks for every situation.
@ Wicked - Yeah, most of my prep is to avoid the dreaded railroad. But even there, it seems like there’s a balance to be struck between giving the players choice, and giving them so much choice that they burn out on information overload - esp. in city / intrigue based adventures. Like you say, it’s a skill that takes time and work to develop, and you never stop learning.
January 16th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
I read that study. I think the most attractive was actually a composite of averages, or rather, ended up looking very average.
I’m a story GM. If it’s cool story for there to be some extra dice rolls, I do that. If it’s cool story for the elf and the orc to leap the chasm, I do that. If it’s cool story for the party not to find the orb, I have the ranger make nature rolls until he inevitably fumbles one, and then make the party run into a rabid grizzly which delays them for long enough to lose the bad guy’s trail.
January 16th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
@Swordgleam:
Well, a bit OT, but: the way I read it was that the face rated most attractive was a composite of real-life faces that had all been previously rated above average attractiveness. Whereas faces that are a composite of a totally random sample of faces are not unattractive but a bit plain.
As I recall, the ‘attractive’ composite was selected as the most attractive face 88% of the time when presented amidst a selection of real-life attractive faces. In other words, the computer-generated face was more attractive than any real-life face.
Back OT - I think the way you handle things is good. A GM needs to at least let the players engage with the environment and feel as if what they do makes a difference. Having the ranger make rolls and then run into a bear at least gives them a reason why they lose the trail.
January 23rd, 2009 at 10:51 am
@Lurkinggherkin and Swordgleam - I’m curious what value you see in faking die rolls.
January 23rd, 2009 at 4:10 pm
Sounds like a leading question….from someone with an axe to grind
I didn’t exactly say I faked die rolls, did I?
Admittedly, I do sometimes fudge a roll, just occasionally, for ’story reasons’ - or because I don’t feel that the ‘game engine’ - rules as written plus the randomising factor of the dice - have produced a realistic, believable result. I’ll emphasise that I don’t do this often, though. (Not as often as some of my players would like, even, I suspect).
If there are crucially important rolls - like ones that a player character’s life hinges on - I’ll make them out in the open, tell people the chance of success or failure. I don’t want the players feeling that it’s my decision whether their character lives or dies.
But even with my behind-screen rolls I mostly go by what’s rolled. I’ll very occasionally nudge things a little - I’m not just an impartial virtual reality implementation, I’m also a story facilitator and I regard it as my duty, and occasionally my privilege, to influence things sometimes. Though most of the time I’m happy to surrender the control to the dice, rules and player choices and let the story ‘emerge’.
One thing I don’t do is just roll dice behind the screen, continually and completely ignore the result and say whatever I want to happen, happens.