Concerning:
The D&D DM is NOT a "Storyteller"
https://youtu.be/g_vTkXro56M (https://youtu.be/g_vTkXro56M)
~ 4 years ago
I understand the essence of this debate has been very frustrating for the OSR community for ages, and I doubt much has changed since I last looked at the goings on when I first switched over from mainstream D&D at least 5 years ago.
As we know, sandbox games (ie emergent play) don't include a preset endgoal, but sometimes one becomes obvious and gets established as such. Campaigns do have a preset end goal, and as you compute the game's short-term (the session itself) you create a midterm model to measure the approach to a concise End Goal/Climax Point (eg Kill the necromancer, over there); this End Goal is not necessarily set in stone, if elements of emergent play inspire the need to modify, exchange, or delete it outright in the interest of continuing play.
You don't play out a story or a narrative but rather the aggregate of the player's choices intervening on the pre-determined circumstances (the "narrative" involves what has happened up to the point precisely before play as background lore). When the players agree to your preset of circumstances, you're forecasting the ramifications of their choices influencing those circumstances, and sometimes even the tone. The narrative should only regain relevance when the summary of the gameplay predetermines an epilogue for the organizer-referee to create, potentially identifying problems that were not resolved or undertaken to create a new campaign with.
No previous term suffices a proper explanation as to how the game itself is guided given this information; each one misunderstands the master role, or confuses it due to niche language.
So what would be better name for the role of a game master?
Answer:
You are a Fate Caster, as in a weather forecaster but with dice instead.
Thanks for reading, I hope this helps towards settling this fight in favor of the whole OSR.
I'm sticking with Game Master.
I like to keep things low key and friendly around the table, so I prefer players referring to me simply as "His divine holiness."
Anyone who makes a production of what the GM/DM/ST/Lord High Elf Puppeteer gets called immediately gets cast into the "person who's opinions I don't give a damn about" pile. Call it whatever you like, it means the same thing, and the title itself has no power.
Oh come on now, I'd like to be addressed as "Supreme Ultimate Overlord of Infinity". :o
I prefer that things be called what they are, whenever possible. Therefore, Game Master is the most accurate for running an RPG properly. It is entirely possible that storyteller or referee or other such terms are more accurate for what others are doing when they think they are running an RPG. :D
Why'd you have to go and give me an existential crisis about my rpgs!
I always went with whatever the game I was playing called the sucker buying the books and running the games. It was never an issue because my players called me by my name. I don't think any player called me DM or GM or referee.
I still prefer "narrator."
Fantasy Underground Conflict Resolution Supervisor.
FUCRS, one and all.
Meh, I tried
Game Master is accurate enough and already well established. Most other terms tend to come off as pretentious, artificial or not as good. Referee is also workable and old, but I always found it "ugly" and associated it with sports. Narrator is not bad (and we used it in my old group occasionally) but implies "storyteller", which a GM is not.
I also seriously considered using "Game Manager" years ago (particularly for my own system), which I thought was more accurate than Game MASTER. But ultimately dropped it, cuz the term "manager" sounds too work related and sterile, plus sorta on the pretentious side. Plus also cuz it was too close to "Game Master", which is the established term, so it defeated the purpose of artificially trying to change the established name for anally retentive reasons that ultimately add absolutely nothing to the game.
What to call the Game Master is one the most pointless debates in TTRPG circles that keeps coming up despite the established term already being good enough and broadly recognized.
Quote from: VisionStorm on January 03, 2023, 07:58:51 AM
Game Master is accurate enough and already well established.
...
What to call the Game Master is one the most pointless debates in TTRPG circles that keeps coming up despite the established term already being good enough and broadly recognized.
Fair enough, my apologies for teasing old wounds yet healed.
If there's anything salvageable about that description, I"m cool.
I've used 'the master' in some of my games. But really, we all know the proper term is 'the asshole' especially in troupe style play.
While I currently use Game Master, my system focuses a bit more on "combat as sport" (vs. as war) and set piece conflicts so Referee probably be slightly more accurate. That said, the ability to shorten Game Master down to GM when needed makes it much easier to keep decent looking formatting in the book's text (particularly as I already use REF for the Reflexes attribute).
I prefer referee, i.e., one to whom questions are referred. You are a referee between the PCs and the world. It speaks to impartiality and puts more onus on the players, as opposed to something "master" which leans to you running everything. Plus two of my favorite games use "referee."
I abbreviate "referee" as "GM" because screw consistency.
If you want to go really old-school-y with it, original D&D uses "Referee", so... This term also implies a degree of impartiality, which I like.
On practice though, we use terms "Master", "DM", and "GM" interchangeably. I don't think anyone really cares.
Quote from: Chris24601 on January 03, 2023, 10:43:34 AM
While I currently use Game Master, my system focuses a bit more on "combat as sport" (vs. as war) and set piece conflicts so Referee probably be slightly more accurate. That said, the ability to shorten Game Master down to GM when needed makes it much easier to keep decent looking formatting in the book's text (particularly as I already use REF for the Reflexes attribute).
Fair enough, I forgot that specific editions can confuse terms with their acronyms (level/level/level is bad enough as it is, been thinking about that also).
Quote from: Vladar on January 03, 2023, 10:57:30 AM
If you want to go really old-school-y with it, original D&D uses "Referee", so... This term also implies a degree of impartiality, which I like.
On practice though, we use terms "Master", "DM", and "GM" interchangeably. I don't think anyone really cares.
Who needs Reflexes anyway though?
I like using DM or ref. Short/sweet, not too steeped in nerdiness.
GM
I like Judge.
Personally I tend to fall back on Dungeon Master, just because it's what I grew up with, but I'll concede Gamemaster as the more generally recognized term.
The way I see it, the GM has three somewhat unrelated roles to play:
1. The "World-Player": The one who plays the setting and NPCs.
2. The "Referee": the arbiter of rules and outcomes
3. The "Game-Manager": Not always the case, but usually the GM is the one that schedules games, arranges locations, recruits new players, etc.
There isn't really a single term that encapsulates all three, so Gamemaster will have to do.
Quote from: ForgottenF on February 03, 2023, 11:27:20 AM
Personally I tend to fall back on Dungeon Master, just because it's what I grew up with, but I'll concede Gamemaster as the more generally recognized term.
The way I see it, the GM has three somewhat unrelated roles to play:
1. The "World-Player": The one who plays the setting and NPCs.
2. The "Referee": the arbiter of rules and outcomes
3. The "Game-Manager": Not always the case, but usually the GM is the one that schedules games, arranges locations, recruits new players, etc.
There isn't really a single term that encapsulates all three, so Gamemaster will have to do.
That looks like something you could divide between three people: a starting World-Player who has an experienced Referee fudging monster rolls/decisions/moves, and also giving hints through NPCs when things are bogged down, while the World-Player focuses on the design and main plot elements/interactions in game. The Manager can help with everything else, including drawing up maps and other handouts that might need organizing for everyone's reference.
I am almost completely in the camp of rolling with whatever the game calls it. Referee when I am playing OD&D, DM for all other D&D, GM, etc. The one exception to that was FF and Director. I hate the idea that I am directing a scene with cast members. That is not what the game is.
If I were to publish a game, I would choose Referee (for whatever that is worth).
I think I've figured out the real issue of what to call the person "running the game":
There's no working definition of what
narrative even is, it seems that people relay on the common use of it as
story.
Since we're all fans of H.P. Lovecraft, it might be useful to reference a paragraph from his own understanding of writing:
Quote
Before considering the various formal classes of composition, it is well to note certain elements common to them all. Upon analysis, every piece of writing will be found to contain one or more of the following basic principles: Description, or an account of the appearance of things; Narration, or an account of the actions of things; Exposition, which defines and explains with precision and lucidity; Argument, which discovers truth and rejects error; and Persuasion, which urges to certain thoughts or acts. The first two are the bases of fiction; the third didactic, scientific, historical, and editorial writings. The fourth and fifth are mostly employed in conjunction with the third, in scientific, philosophical, and partisan literature. All these principles, however, are usually mingled with one another. The work of fiction may have its scientific, historical, or argumentative side; whilst the text-book or treatise may be embellished with descriptions and anecdotes.
from: 'Literary Composition'; heading: 'Elemental Phases'
first published: The United Amateur, 19, No. 3 (January 1920), 56–60
https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/essays/lc.aspx (https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/essays/lc.aspx)
[
emphasis mine]
Technically, the players "Narrate" as much as the referees do, that much is fair; but they only narrate whatever is in their charge as players, and likewise to what's in charge of the referees. However, referees only narrate in response to the players narration, and he must describe the setting and present some circumstances first before that happens. It seems like there is a stronger leaning for some categories over others between the two metagame roles.
Perhaps, if whomever runs the game has a priority to Describe and Exposit the game's events (instigation), whilst whomever plays the game may only Narrate and Persuade for their choices within those events (reaction), then we must conclude that the game is really just one big Argument over how it ends.
Given this, there is no GM or PC: everyone is merely argumentative, and thus the object of the game is to have fun with arguing.
Quote from: ClusterFluster on January 02, 2023, 01:07:43 PM
Concerning:
The D&D DM is NOT a "Storyteller"
https://youtu.be/g_vTkXro56M (https://youtu.be/g_vTkXro56M)
~ 4 years ago
I understand the essence of this debate has been very frustrating for the OSR community for ages, and I doubt much has changed since I last looked at the goings on when I first switched over from mainstream D&D at least 5 years ago.
As we know, sandbox games (ie emergent play) don't include a preset endgoal, but sometimes one becomes obvious and gets established as such. Campaigns do have a preset end goal, and as you compute the game's short-term (the session itself) you create a midterm model to measure the approach to a concise End Goal/Climax Point (eg Kill the necromancer, over there); this End Goal is not necessarily set in stone, if elements of emergent play inspire the need to modify, exchange, or delete it outright in the interest of continuing play.
You don't play out a story or a narrative but rather the aggregate of the player's choices intervening on the pre-determined circumstances (the "narrative" involves what has happened up to the point precisely before play as background lore). When the players agree to your preset of circumstances, you're forecasting the ramifications of their choices influencing those circumstances, and sometimes even the tone. The narrative should only regain relevance when the summary of the gameplay predetermines an epilogue for the organizer-referee to create, potentially identifying problems that were not resolved or undertaken to create a new campaign with.
No previous term suffices a proper explanation as to how the game itself is guided given this information; each one misunderstands the master role, or confuses it due to niche language.
So what would be better name for the role of a game master?
Answer:
You are a Fate Caster, as in a weather forecaster but with dice instead.
Thanks for reading, I hope this helps towards settling this fight in favor of the whole OSR.
Does a presete end goal emerge? wouldn't that be something that exists from the start?
Semantics not withsdanding:
No, the DM/GM is still not telling a story, sure, the players might go kill the necromancer, but they might choose to go in a different direction. Sure, this might mean the end of the world but as long as you're not merelly giving the players the illusion of choice it's a possibility, one I have seen played out from time to time.
The core of the argument is this:
Narrative before or narrative after.
Meaning you go fishing in order to tell a story about fishing or you go fishing to fish and a story might or might not emerge from your fishing trip.
We tell stories about the Vikings, did they got into a longboat qwith the purpose of telling a story?
If yours is a living world and the PCs have agency you can not know what's gonna happen: I just set a vampire against a ddark druid (pit one monster against the other), due to chance it might come to light we were working with the vampire to find out about our enemies and cut a deal with her so she didn't hunt humans, halflings, dwarves or elfs, in exchange we would look for a ring she got stolen from her.
When I did that none could have predicted this would happen, because chance is ever present and we as players have agency over our PCs.
Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 03, 2023, 03:19:00 PM
Does a presete end goal emerge? wouldn't that be something that exists from the start?
Semantics not withsdanding:
No, the DM/GM is still not telling a story, sure, the players might go kill the necromancer, but they might choose to go in a different direction. Sure, this might mean the end of the world but as long as you're not merelly giving the players the illusion of choice it's a possibility, one I have seen played out from time to time.
The core of the argument is this:
Narrative before or narrative after.
Meaning you go fishing in order to tell a story about fishing or you go fishing to fish and a story might or might not emerge from your fishing trip.
We tell stories about the Vikings, did they got into a longboat qwith the purpose of telling a story?
If yours is a living world and the PCs have agency you can not know what's gonna happen: I just set a vampire against a ddark druid (pit one monster against the other), due to chance it might come to light we were working with the vampire to find out about our enemies and cut a deal with her so she didn't hunt humans, halflings, dwarves or elfs, in exchange we would look for a ring she got stolen from her.
When I did that none could have predicted this would happen, because chance is ever present and we as players have agency over our PCs.
I've mixed up my wording, you cannot have a preset ending emerge...
I do agree with you about the higher quality in telling whatever story happens after the fishing trip, so I will attempt to rephrase:
Deleting a preset goal in exchange for an emergent but consistent goal (i.e. not otherwise preset) was what I should have said. If there needs to be a reason for swarms of ravenous undead across the countryside, the adventurers are going to have to face off against a necromancer sooner or later--my view is that this wouldn't be "railroading" anything because the GM is presenting and following the thematic fiction of that game world (aka. a thematic sandbox), but letting the adventurer's find him of their own skills and assumptions would of course preserve agency.
So if the goal during session one in a thematic sandbox was to kill Necromancer A, but the adventurer's somehow resolve that goal just after third level (however unlikely), you would offer Necromancer B. Killing one necromancer off early, but still seeing undead everywhere, means that there is a cult of necromancers, and the adventure continues. There's no reason why this style of play can't be agreed to during a session zero. My comparison to the pure sandbox style was meant to show that there was more nuance to the narrative vs. sandbox styles.
Published adventures by TSR and WotC, etc., were clearly interpreted by many new players over time as adventure
instructions and not as guidelines, because everything about the adventure is spelled out in order to give us, as consumers, the impression of our money well spent on professional game design--otherwise, I doubt that this argument would even be happening. I think that the "story" side looks at this problem and is trying to emphasize the elements of a published adventure as being core to the roleplaying experience, but this is something like the cart placed before the horse if the story doesn't actually happen until everyone is done playing through each session. The label that they have chosen for their advocacy implies that there is a story that follows the dice results in accordance to pre-published trivia, regardless of who in fact wrote it, and is always predetermined by the universe itself.
Quote from: ClusterFluster on February 03, 2023, 09:00:58 PM
Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 03, 2023, 03:19:00 PM
Does a presete end goal emerge? wouldn't that be something that exists from the start?
Semantics not withsdanding:
No, the DM/GM is still not telling a story, sure, the players might go kill the necromancer, but they might choose to go in a different direction. Sure, this might mean the end of the world but as long as you're not merelly giving the players the illusion of choice it's a possibility, one I have seen played out from time to time.
The core of the argument is this:
Narrative before or narrative after.
Meaning you go fishing in order to tell a story about fishing or you go fishing to fish and a story might or might not emerge from your fishing trip.
We tell stories about the Vikings, did they got into a longboat qwith the purpose of telling a story?
If yours is a living world and the PCs have agency you can not know what's gonna happen: I just set a vampire against a ddark druid (pit one monster against the other), due to chance it might come to light we were working with the vampire to find out about our enemies and cut a deal with her so she didn't hunt humans, halflings, dwarves or elfs, in exchange we would look for a ring she got stolen from her.
When I did that none could have predicted this would happen, because chance is ever present and we as players have agency over our PCs.
I've mixed up my wording, you cannot have a preset ending emerge...
I do agree with you about the higher quality in telling whatever story happens after the fishing trip, so I will attempt to rephrase:
Deleting a preset goal in exchange for an emergent but consistent goal (i.e. not otherwise preset) was what I should have said. If there needs to be a reason for swarms of ravenous undead across the countryside, the adventurers are going to have to face off against a necromancer sooner or later--my view is that this wouldn't be "railroading" anything because the GM is presenting and following the thematic fiction of that game world (aka. a thematic sandbox), but letting the adventurer's find him of their own skills and assumptions would of course preserve agency.
So if the goal during session one in a thematic sandbox was to kill Necromancer A, but the adventurer's somehow resolve that goal just after third level (however unlikely), you would offer Necromancer B. Killing one necromancer off early, but still seeing undead everywhere, means that there is a cult of necromancers, and the adventure continues. There's no reason why this style of play can't be agreed to during a session zero. My comparison to the pure sandbox style was meant to show that there was more nuance to the narrative vs. sandbox styles.
Published adventures by TSR and WotC, etc., were clearly interpreted by many new players over time as adventure instructions and not as guidelines, because everything about the adventure is spelled out in order to give us, as consumers, the impression of our money well spent on professional game design--otherwise, I doubt that this argument would even be happening. I think that the "story" side looks at this problem and is trying to emphasize the elements of a published adventure as being core to the roleplaying experience, but this is something like the cart placed before the horse if the story doesn't actually happen until everyone is done playing through each session. The label that they have chosen for their advocacy implies that there is a story that follows the dice results in accordance to pre-published trivia, regardless of who in fact wrote it, and is always predetermined by the universe itself.
If you had bad guy A planned to be the BBG and your players somehow find and kill it earlier and then you switch to creating bad guy B that's EXACTLY like bad Guy A that's NOT a sandbox, that's just the illusion of agency, you're gonna have a necromancer as the final boss no matter what.
The same as if you have bad guy A behind door number 1, bt your players go chasing squirrels in the forest and so you put bad guy A behind a tree. You have a preset event you're determined to have happen ON your terms/time frame.
In a game where the PCs have agency neither of those would happen, there wouldn't be a cult of necromancers UNLESS I had thought it before they found and killed the first one.
Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 03, 2023, 09:09:48 PM
If you had bad guy A planned to be the BBG and your players somehow find and kill it earlier and then you switch to creating bad guy B that's EXACTLY like bad Guy A that's NOT a sandbox, that's just the illusion of agency, you're gonna have a necromancer as the final boss no matter what.
The same as if you have bad guy A behind door number 1, bt your players go chasing squirrels in the forest and so you put bad guy A behind a tree. You have a preset event you're determined to have happen ON your terms/time frame.
In a game where the PCs have agency neither of those would happen, there wouldn't be a cult of necromancers UNLESS I had thought it before they found and killed the first one.
Yes, I said carbon copy of the necromancer, and I am otherwise incapable of generalizing about alternative villains within such a cult, and I am not in anyway trying to fuse two styles of play, and I absolutely told you that players are unable to reject this before the campaign even starts per the social contract of all roleplaying, because higher than normal amounts of undead plaguing the countryside is just something that happens on a Tuesday in Greyhawk and I must refuse myself the liberty of coming up with a plan B so that players can still take advantage of their undead-killing class features crammed onto one character sheet from the thousand of player character options books that they insist on using in every game, and I don't understand that you could otherwise just have that necromancer merely be a sub-quest in a pure sandbox style of play if that's what the players really wanted before any game-time really got started or if the whole thing is just keeping them in a rut and they feel uninspired during the middle of the game, and I do in fact advocate GMs taking minutes during play so that you can penalize players for spending too much time using the bathroom according to the pre-scheduled seconds, so bravo sir, you've caught me red-handed and pants-downed.
Quote from: ClusterFluster on February 03, 2023, 02:14:56 PM
I think I've figured out the real issue of what to call the person "running the game":
There's no working definition of what narrative even is, it seems that people relay on the common use of it as story.
There actually is. And it seems consistent with what you quote from Lovecraft. There is a whole field of study called narratology. And by the way, in this field, the term "story" is the sequence of imagined events in raw form. What we do in an RPG is story. It's not even a stretch or a gray area or anything like that. It's a spot on fit. We're creating sequences of imagined events, and the game system to one degree or another helps guide us in that.
The narrative is the telling of that story. And that doesn't just mean something like a Morgan Friedman voiceover. That's just one style of narrative. A play is a form of narrative, even though it's not just one voice telling the story, and even though it includes stage instructions. And, yeah, an RPG session is a narrative, even though players might tell some of the story through communicating their characters actions, and even though it includes dice rolls and rules references. At the end of it, you walk away with a sense of the sequence of events. That alone fulfills the definition. But to go one further, it's not even like this just emerges out of happenstance. We communicate at the table and we have written rules precisely to help us all be more clear with regards to the sequence of events.
Quote from: ClusterFluster on February 03, 2023, 11:53:09 AM
That looks like something you could divide between three people: a starting World-Player who has an experienced Referee fudging monster rolls/decisions/moves, and also giving hints through NPCs when things are bogged down, while the World-Player focuses on the design and main plot elements/interactions in game. The Manager can help with everything else, including drawing up maps and other handouts that might need organizing for everyone's reference.
I'm not so convinced that the World-Player can be separate from the Referee. I guess it depends what you mean by it. When I see "world player" the control of NPCs is the more obvious part of that. The less obvious part is in deciding how the world works.
Let's say there's a PC who's a really skilled dude with a sling, and the player specifically says he's aiming to hit the giant right between the eyes. And dice come up with the best possible rolls on both the hit roll and the damage roll. To be clear what I'm stipulating here is an instance where the action and intent is the clearest possible; where the dice rolls are the best possible; and where the circumstances are those most likely to replicate the outcome of David & Goliath. Such that IF the game world is such that felling a giant with a single sling stone is possible however unlikely, then that's what should happen in this case. But if the game is one where a giant should never be felled with a single sling stone, then the giant should survive the attack.
It would seem to be up to the referee to make the determination that these are the most favorable actions, circumstances, and results. And it should be up to the world guy to determine whether or not such a thing is possible.
You can imagine the rub if the world guy affirms that, "Yes, the giant should be dead, as we're playing in a Biblical style setting," but the referee says, "No, the rules of D&D say that the damage is only a small fraction of the giant's hit points. The giant lives!"
Yeah. We can articulate two separate roles. Two separate hats as it were. But I don't think it works unless the two are of one mind. As the saying goes, "No one can serve two masters." Hence "Game Master" (emphasis on the singular) actually does seem to be the most precise term for the necessary amalgamation of duties involved.
Quote from: ClusterFluster on February 03, 2023, 11:53:09 AM
Quote from: ForgottenF on February 03, 2023, 11:27:20 AM
Personally I tend to fall back on Dungeon Master, just because it's what I grew up with, but I'll concede Gamemaster as the more generally recognized term.
The way I see it, the GM has three somewhat unrelated roles to play:
1. The "World-Player": The one who plays the setting and NPCs.
2. The "Referee": the arbiter of rules and outcomes
3. The "Game-Manager": Not always the case, but usually the GM is the one that schedules games, arranges locations, recruits new players, etc.
There isn't really a single term that encapsulates all three, so Gamemaster will have to do.
That looks like something you could divide between three people: a starting World-Player who has an experienced Referee fudging monster rolls/decisions/moves, and also giving hints through NPCs when things are bogged down, while the World-Player focuses on the design and main plot elements/interactions in game. The Manager can help with everything else, including drawing up maps and other handouts that might need organizing for everyone's reference.
Theoretically you could, but as others have alluded to, you run into the problem that in any cooperative enterprise, someone kind of has to have a deciding vote to keep things running smoothly. If you were going to split the job up, I suppose you'd give that power to the referee, but you still have an issue of manpower. it's usually hard enough to get enough people together for a good game, without multiplying the number of necessary roles.
Anyone can do the "game-manager" task, and its not rare for non-GM players to do it. It tends to fall to the GM partially out of tradition, and partially because they're usually the most motivated. The referee can't --or at least probably shouldn't-- be a player, though, because it opens the game up to suspicions that they are biasing their rulings in favor of their character. That's precisely why so many people are so steadfastly opposed to so-called "DM-PCs". In theory, having the referee also be the "world-player" spreads their investment out across a wide spectrum of characters and elements and so mitigates the temptation to bias. You could do a co-GM kind of arrangement where you have two people, neither of whom play PCs, and one does design and lore while the other runs the game, but that isn't quite the same thing. And again, it's just more people you have to get in the game.
I'm the Dungeon Master.
Regardless of what I'm running.
Quote from: Lunamancer on February 03, 2023, 11:58:40 PM
... There is a whole field of study called narratology. And by the way, in this field, the term "story" is the sequence of imagined events in raw form. What we do in an RPG is story. It's not even a stretch or a gray area or anything like that. It's a spot on fit. We're creating sequences of imagined events, and the game system to one degree or another helps guide us in that.
... And, yeah, an RPG session is a narrative, even though players might tell some of the story through communicating their characters actions, and even though it includes dice rolls and rules references. At the end of it, you walk away with a sense of the sequence of events. ... We communicate at the table and we have written rules precisely to help us all be more clear with regards to the sequence of events.
My apologies, I should have written that
many players don't seem to have a working definition of what narrative is, and merely rely on a possibly convenient over-simplification of the term as they engage in debate on the issue. I fully agree with your assessment on all counts, it looks consistent with the idea of telling whatever story arises from "the fishing trip you were going on anyway" concept of emergent tales using guidelines, only that I did not mean to imply that stories emerge from gameplay without any sequences of cause and effect by player negotiations.
Quote
I'm not so convinced that the World-Player can be separate from the Referee. I guess it depends what you mean by it. When I see "world player" the control of NPCs is the more obvious part of that. The less obvious part is in deciding how the world works.
...
You can imagine the rub if the world guy affirms that, "Yes, the giant should be dead, as we're playing in a Biblical style setting," but the referee says, "No, the rules of D&D say that the damage is only a small fraction of the giant's hit points. The giant lives!"
I more or less had in mind that the World-Player has final say in what monsters during any interactions might decide to do, including how situations would be handled given the David vs. Goliath scenario you have given, whilst the Referee is less "referee" and more of a Rules Consultant, who may double as NPC/monster voicing to help spare the World-Player from losing his voice; if this were a movie, RC is a Director to the WP as the Producer. So my concept of World-Player was ultimately as Referee as well, with someone else to help manage the immediate gameplay (i.e. combat, crowds, et.c. according to the campaign outline). The WP/R could be freer to handle player questions and other in-game effects. I would stress that this would only be very advantageous to new GMs trying to learn how to manage the game on their own.
Quote from: ForgottenF on February 04, 2023, 02:09:42 AM
... If you were going to split the job up, I suppose you'd give that power to the referee, but you still have an issue of manpower. it's usually hard enough to get enough people together for a good game, without multiplying the number of necessary roles.
Anyone can do the "game-manager" task, and its not rare for non-GM players to do it.
Indeed, I would like the idea of a separate game-manager also taking on the role of Lore-Keeper for intricate or long-running games requiring reference to previous records of play, but as you mentioned it is difficult as it is trying to get enough people into one room to roll dice in the first place, and this division of labour certainly complicates things.
As others have already mentioned, the original term is referee. It was used by the all the old Big Three rpgs (OD&D, RuneQuest 1&2, and Traveller). One thing I dislike about GM is that people keeep slipping up and use DM instead, a title I really dislike.
I'm the DM. Never got used to Game Master or other. My players just call me "sir", though.
"Never mind, the man behind the filing cabinet."
I find Dungeon Master to be triggering and it makes me sad that WotC wants to enslave me. /s
In my gaming circles it's always DM, even for scifi stuff. I like judge and referee, but have never used those terms outside writing stuff. Gamemaster is probably a lot more inclusive compared to DM, but yeah...DM.
Quote from: DocJones on February 04, 2023, 09:17:20 PM
I find Dungeon Master to be triggering and it makes me sad that WotC wants to enslave me. /s
I'd rather ridicule those who find the title to be sexually enticing.
Particularly at the sort of parades that they demand the attendance of everyone's children.
Edit:
I haven't seen the </sarcasm tag> for years and read that as "/sad"
I would be happy with "Sir" but more often than not I get called "Screen Monkey" ;D
Quote from: zincmoat on February 06, 2023, 05:23:56 AM
I would be happy with "Sir" but more often than not I get called "Screen Monkey" ;D
Now that you mention it, I'd like to be called "Dr. Leader" 8)
Quote from: Spinachcat on February 04, 2023, 04:13:44 AM
I'm the Dungeon Master.
Regardless of what I'm running.
I used to be the DM in all games too. Somewhere around 3.x I found myself so disillusioned with D&D that I naturally stopped calling myself a DM and went with GM. It's weird, because I didn't notice it until about a year into it and the moment I realize it, was when I knew the breakup of my love for D&D as a brand was real.
Because I certainly remember having this conversation at conventions during the hey-day of 2e when it was shiny and new, and I'd look sideways at "GM's" who weren't my tribe. Then god forbid the 90's hit, and while I was deep into WoD when it landed, I'll be damned if I called myself the Storyteller... are you fucking crazy? I'm a DM!...
But those days are long gone.
In English, "referee" is fine, "judge" is fine, "game master" is fine, even "dungeon master" is also fine, if the players have cause to think they might be going on a dungeon. In Portuguese, typically the standard term was "mestre do jogo" or "MJ" or, much much much more typically, just "mestre."
In Polish it's Mistrz Gry or eMGie in short, so basically Game Master and GM.