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Welcome to another exciting edition of Game Design Discussions! I hope you have been enjoying the series so far. I know I have and I have learned a thing or two as well.

Way back in the day, the very first Rogue Trader game hit the shelves. It was a sci-fi tabletop game to play games of battles in the far future. Back in those halcyon days, a Game Master was part of the repetoire of things you were supposed to have in order to play. The role fo the Game Master was to set the scenarios, create the force lists, set-up terrain, control random events, and then act as an arbiter and judge during the battle. As 40K evolved, we all know that by 3rd Edition, the game was supposed to be a Game Master-less experience and run on its own.

Of course, the most famous genre of game to use a Game Master is the pen and paper Role-Playing Game. Here the GM sets the stage, runs Non-player characters, controls the baddies, and everything in-between! It is a thankless job. However, there are also GM-less RPGs, that typically focus more on the story telling and less on the crunch of RPGs. On the flip side, there are non-RPG games that use Game Masters as well. The one we might be most familiar with is GW's own Inquisitor game.

Once, I heard that creating GM-less games is like game design without a net. If you fall, there is nothing (or no one) there to keep you from hitting the ground. The idea behind this was that a GMed game allowed a certain amount of looseness with the rules a sthe GM could cover any gaps or interpret any confusion. GM-less games do not have that luxury.

So, let's dicsuss the role/relevancy of the Game Master in game design.

It is not a bad description, the GM stands to save your game system from falling apart, decide on rules conflicts and more importantly make sure the game is balanced and fun for the players.

The disadvantage of a game master is obvious, first you need a third player, hopefully impartial and sadist enough to want to orchestrate a full scenario, including balancing the forces, creating the actual scenario have ready surprised to keep the players on their toes and keeping the flow steady.

If you think at this point the game master is doing half the game developers work, you are right.

RPG and some boardgames help by making the game master the antagonist, allowing him more involvement, another interesting experiment is what Myth does by making the antagonist an AI, but keeping the players in the role of GM and players at the same time the players orchestrate how difficult the game is going to be.

Designing without a GM is indeed more demanding, it forces you to make a tighter game and balance both in antagonist forces and scenarios are more important than in a GM game.

I have a book on wargaming (historical but still) and it was written in the late 70s I think.

It had a really cool suggestion for a beginner game that included a GM. The scenario is WW2 in Africa.

Each player has a map of the battlefield they draw before the battle, a chart of tanks and silhouettes and a a list of their forces. The 2 players must sit so they are looking at the table from model perspective. (so you arent above your models etc). They then direct the GM to place models solely on their orders by word. They must distinguish enemy models by the chart and execute orders by word with the GM interpreting them.

Using the maps, vocal orders and a lack of gods eye view it adds a cool layer of complexity and also adds the chaos of war factor into the game. You could mistake that tank way over the table as armoured cars and fire the wrong weapons at it, or you could order something not achievable to a unit (take hill so and so.... but its 3 turns away sir etc).

It is something I have always wanted to try. Of course the book is far more detailed on the scenario but I think that is the gist of it. I also think is gives a great point of what a GM can be used for, not just to make the story or the scenario etc but to actively take part in the game through orders and so on. Plus the GM can see everything while the players are limited.

I think GMs have a time and place and with a little work and imagination ANY game can have a GM.

It's an interesting idea for sure. And I think that there are definitely some games out there that would completely fail, or completely succeed with/without a GM.

Take for instance, Pathfinder or DnD. I just can't see either of these games working without a GM, without going with some horribly rail driven scenario. I have a bunch of 4th ed. DnD scenario/campaign books, and while they do feel more "on the rails", they are still open enough that a DM can tweak and alter aspects of it to fit his/her group.

Obviously, I don't think this is very necessary when your overall story is encapsulated into individual missions, etc. Such as what Malifaux did in it's first edition, I'm referring here to the mechanic where each crew drew for a mission/scenario, and if you were doing a campaign, you could in essence write your story as you went via playing the game (instead of the opposite in a PnP RPG, where the DM reveals the "pre-written" story, and the party reacts to it)

Pretty much ALL of the miniature games produced by Game Designers' Workshop (GDW) used a gamemaster.

And for good reasons.

Every one of them made hidden movement a MAJOR part of the game, which was nearly impossible to use without a GM.

Also, all of the games used some form of Written Order, over which the GM could intervene if it thought that a move by a player defied the meaning or intent of the orders.

Those were some of the best games I have ever played in my life.

MB

Game masters, judges or umpires are useful in a number of types of games.

Any game that features any type of hidden movement will benefit from a GM. This includes scenarios such as Vietnam skirmish, submarine warfare, operational warfare generally (anything involving maps, such as larger Napoleonic battles, naval campaigns, and others.)

Umpires are essential for the kind of "sprawling wargames" in which the precise rules are less important that the way the players interact with each other and their briefings, rather than precise information about forces and probabilities.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
It is not a bad description, the GM stands to save your game system from falling apart, decide on rules conflicts and more importantly make sure the game is balanced and fun for the players.

The disadvantage of a game master is obvious, first you need a third player, hopefully impartial and sadist enough to want to orchestrate a full scenario, including balancing the forces, creating the actual scenario have ready surprised to keep the players on their toes and keeping the flow steady.

I think the most important part of what PsychoticStorm points out here are the drawbacks of requiring a GM.

Yes, a GM usually requires that more players be involved in the game. That's a big one. It means that if you are going to get people to play your game, those customers have to line up a larger group of like-minded people that are also interested in playing the game.

Another common criticism of GM'd games that Easy E alludes to is the perception that one of the 'palyers' will get 'stuck' being the GM. In other words, nobody can play the game unless one of the players wants to do the hard, possibly less amusing job of running the game.

That said, there are a slew of advantages to a GM'd game, and it doesn't just come down to being able to be loose with the game design.

GM'd games have to be balanced as well. How many times have you seen RPG players complain about how one type of character, ability, power, monster, etc. etc. is overpowered? Game rules should be tight, and forcing the GM to adjudicate your rules all of the time makes being the GM a whole lot less fun.

The most significant advantage of having a GM is, in my opinion, having a human being who can tailor the gameplay experience to the wants and needs of a specific group of players, on the fly.

Another big advantage of having a GM is the ability to give players a more dynamic, challenging experience. The GM is a constant source of exactly that precious element that fuels the magic of table top gaming: the unknown. If a game has an AI, like Shadows of Brimstone or Mice and Mystics, the players know exactly what the enemy models are going to do, and you have to inject all sorts of funky elements to help create a sense of the unknown. These elements introduce a lot of risk, because without a GM, the game can get pretty merciless pretty quickly, or wind up being a cake walk because of easy card flips, hot dice rolls, or whathaveyou.

Mice and Mystics, as fun as it is, can get really brutal really quickly. With a human GM at the table, you have a human mind controlling the antagonists.

GM'd games can be very dynamic, open, and rewarding experiences; and not because the game designers want to stick some player with doing half of their work. It takes more work to create a game and fictional universe that stimulates the imagination enough and provides enough structure to make it very easy for players to create their own unique stories than it does to make a confined, out of the box gameplay experience. At least in my opinion.

That said, I do very much appreciate PsychoticStorm's point about using the GM as a lazy way to make players do your work. However, if that's the case, it is an issue of not-so-great game design in my opinion.

Our game uses a GM and plays out like a skirmish wargame on the table. One of our design goals is to make the game quick, easy, accessible, and fun for everyone on the table. That's something of an uphill battle when you want to incorporate a GM.

We didin't want GMing to be a chore, and for that matter, we were really interested in finding ways to make the GM "fungible" so to speak. We want GMing to be something that gets shared around between players. Jim might run a scenario or few, then Bob has a cool scenario he wants to run so Jim drops back to controlling his character. Chris just picked up the new cultist box set and wants to run one of the scenarios, so he paints up the models and runs a game after Bob is finished running his scenario. Next week Jim is back running scenarios that wrote himself, because that's his bag.

There's a few things we have worked into the system to help achieve our goals:

1: GMing a game rewards your character. The GM is expected to have a character, and we don't want that character falling behind in experience just because you happen to be running a game.

2: The GM has personal objectives. More than just getting a standard reward every time you run a scenario, the GM can select optional objectives, that, when achieved during a game, provide additional rewards to his/her character. Although there is a generic set of these optional objectives, every scenario has one or more specially-tailored optional objectives that help to advance the narrative of the game, even if they are at cross purposes with the GM's 'win condition'. So there's a one-two punch. The GM is working to achieve something for his/her own benefit, and achieving that something (or attempting to) helps to give the scenario a more narrative feel.

3: GMing is simple. GMing is, at its core, very simple. If you can play a character, you can GM a scenario. The GM does not need to know a slew of extra rules, memorize a bunch of special effects and abilities, or internalize a complex plot line. Scenarios are pre-written and have an interrelated, narrative structure on a thoroughly ambiguous time scale (that's not so easy, by the way). Scenarios from different plot arcs can be easily interleaved. A GM can delve very deeply into the story, but that is a choice, not a requirement.

If we think of this topic as a "chart", then the less "tangible" the game is, the more a GM is required. The more tangible, the less a GM is required.

DnD and Pathfinder, and most traditional RPGs are very intangible (even with the introduction of minis into DnD, the setup of those minis / maps / encounter / stories that lead you there are all ephemeral and intangible, only the representation of such is tangible. So this is a game much more towards the "intangible" end of the spectrum. You can have a roll up mat, a bunch of minis, and some people ready to rock, but in RPG's like this, without a GM to set the story, you just have a bunch of props and really no way to get things going and sustained).

You also have board games which, with some notable exceptions, tend to be extremely "tangible". You have this piece, this method of locomotion, this objective, and it's allowed to do things in a relatively linear fashion to achieve the end goal of the game.

Wargaming is pretty far along the "tangible" curve, but the exception is, of course, rules in competitive play. In casual play, the players quickly work things out on their own to keep the game going. In competitive play, a neutral 3rd party is required as an arbiter because the competitive players have a stake, and therefore are more likely to be biased towards the outcome that favors their stake. Not always, but its sound logic assumption. THe reason why there's a pinch of intangibility here is because for one, wargames have rolling evolution of design. By their nature they are meant to have continuous releases. This usually leads to new rules, which interact with established rules in interesting ways. This can sometimes result in player confusion, or intentional misappropriation of syntax to glean further positive result.

This is where things like Infernals for PP come in ; they serve to curtail the elements of intangibility (rules collisions) in the game that can cause problems (not i am not saying all intangibility is bad, it's not, but elements of it, like any element of game design, can cause problems in a game).



I think its also very hard to permanently establish a tangible game with a 3rd party umpire / ref / GM. Not impossible, but very hard. I think in this day and age it would meet a lot of resistance in wargaming, as it would be viewed as "the boring part to play".

I don't know Haight. I don't think I quite agree with your tangible/intangible premise.

Look at Super Dungeon Explore, for example, or the Conan board game. Both are GM'd games that are very tangible.

It seems to me that by 'intangible' you mean something akin to 'choice'. In other words, a range of possibilities controlled by an active, human participant.

In this sense, there's a ton of 'intangibility' to any player v player table top wargame. The intangibility is what makes the game fun. You don't know what your opponent is going to do. The game rules provide a framework within which the players have a certain degree of latitude in making choices. You can introduce this type of unknown through tangible means, e.g. the action deck in KDM, but as I discussed in my previous post, the lack of human discretion can cause a new set of problems.

A GM is not terribly different. The difference with a GM is that the GM often has a different set of rules to follow or a different degree of latitude in making choices. When we think of RPGs, we often think of the GM controlling every aspect of the game, hence this 'intangibility' that you pointed out. I think this perception exists is because we assume that GMs running RPGs are making up their own story, perhaps even their own fictional universe, or even their own rules!

But that has more to do with how particular players approach a game than with the game itself. Some dungeon masters just run adventures out of the book, so to speak, and are basically following a script. The game may provide the GM with ultimate authority, but, let's face it, most players expect the GM to follow the rules of whatever game they are playing.

If a GM in a Pathfinder game started violating the turn structure and making up rules on the fly, I daresay many players would be as confused as your opponent would be if you started doing the same thing in a game of Dystopian Wars.

The very term itself, "Game Master" implies ultimate authority over a game, but as in any table top game, from checkers to MtG to Malifaux, there is a social contract at work.

I also happen to think that GMing can work great in a very structured game, especially a co-op game. The GM gives the players a human to interact with; a human to make choices for their opponents within the range of possibilities created by the game rules. Hence you get not only a visceral sense of the unknown, but the GM is also capable of exercising discretion; of examining the way in which the game is unfolding, and adjusting on the fly in order to help maintain the enjoyment of the players.

Players do this in player vs player table top games all of the time. Have you ever taken it easy on an opponent, or 'red-lined' an outcome because it would have caused the game to be less enjoyable? I know I certainly have. I have even done it in co-op games that don't have a GM.

Keep in mind there are 'levels' of GMs as well, from the outright demigod of a GM who is utterly in charge, down to the SFB "Controller" who is more of an overseer than anything else - someone who is not strictly needed but useful and provides a way to keep track of various things.

This incidentally is a good way to learn a game, watching it played and taking part in the mechanics.

@Weeble,


All good examples, it's one aspect of game design, not an ironclad rule. There are games that expressly set out to change that, or merge the two.

Choice isn't analogous to tangibility though. A better match would be "defined or undefined". For instance, there are defined things that i can do in Monopoly. Whatever is not defined, I cannot do. This is called "positive clarification", meaning that the rules tell me what i can do, they do not need to tell me all the things i can't. Using Monopoly as an example, there is one card that will move me to St. Charles Place, and one that will move me to Boardwalk. Absent those cards, or rolling the dice to land on them, there is nothing that allows me to move from Free Parking to Boardwalk simply because i would like to. There's no defined mechanic that will let me do that, because the game is very thoroughly "tangible" in its ruleset (though house rules - like trading of properties etc., made by players is a TOTALLY different story... monopoly house rules are very good examples of how to make a very tangibly designed game into one that is designed more intangibly.

DnD is much different : because its open narrative, when confronted by 3 orcs in the tavern, the GM is probably expecting that i draw my characters weapon, spellbook, etc of choice and have at it. But what if i ask him if there's a chandelier in the tavern, and can I run, jump at it, grab onto it and bowl into all three orcs at once ?

This is a good example of games that have more or less tangible design to them : the more definition in a game, the more tangible. It's also not a black / white scenario, but more a slider on scale of grey. As such, I tried to couch my post in as many qualfiers that would open the door for the examples that exist out there that are contrary to this game design theory. We can see this even in video games ; while by their nature all video games are at least a little tangible (due do the fact that we are limited by the code in the game!), A skyrim, Fallout 3, Grand Theft Auto 5, etc., are a lot more towards the intangible end of game design spectrum (freedom, do what you want, nonlinear, etc) than a game, say, like Plants Vs. Zombies, or Toy Soldiers, etc., which are more towards the tangible end ( I bring these up specifically because they are two games that, though quite tangible in design, also have a lot of freedom of choice specifically to your point).



And yes, i've self moderated an outcome in a tabletop game to avoid an unpleasant experience for my opponent... but i don't think that's really so much about game design or referring as it is about not wanting my opponent to have a gakky time.

I think in a previous discussion I said this is the difference between boardgames and wargames for me, with more words, boardgames tell you what it can be done, wargames give you the sandbox to play in and having a board really does this separation.

 Haight wrote:

And yes, i've self moderated an outcome in a tabletop game to avoid an unpleasant experience for my opponent... but i don't think that's really so much about game design or referring as it is about not wanting my opponent to have a gakky time.

But that's exactly my point.

If you told your GM that you wanted to swing on a chandelier, the GM could easily say, "There's no rules for that. You can't do it." Or the GM could say, fine, your character does it, but it does not change the rules. Or the GM could utilize a mechanic specifically designed for the type of action, possibly exercising some judgment in applying a particularly apropos set of pre-defined rules. Or the GM could make some gack up on the fly.

What part of the game rules actually say that you can swing on that chandelier? Just because you have a GM doesn't mean that the game designers intended to allow you to swing on the chandelier.

I could do the exact same thing in a game of Mordheim, or Infinity. I can tell my opponent that I want my character to swing on that chandelier, or back flip off of that wall there. My opponent can just as easily say, "There's no rules for that. You can't do it," or we can choose any of the other options described above.

In many ways, the GM is simply someone that is invested with the authority to adjudicate the game, by the players themselves. In plenty of "GM'd" games the GM does not even have that authority defined within the actual rules. Even when the game rules specifically invest the GM with such authority, it amounts to little more than a suggestion on the part of the game designers.

Think about Dungeons and Dragons. What part of the game rules, the actual mechanics of the game, are devoted to the Dungeon Master?

None.

There's simply rules for attributes, and movement, and armor, and weapons, and spells, and experience points, and even treasure! If I recall correctly, a player can look in the book and know how much experience should be awarded for defeating a certain type of enemy and even how much treasure should be found. Hell, the players can randomly generate encounters and even terrain, because there are mechanics within the game rules that allow it.

The players could easily structure the game such that the enemies they fight follow an AI, or are controlled by the players themselves, and the game rules would perfectly well accommodate this play style with no alterations of the actual game mechanics. There's nothing about the game rules that has anything to do with a GM. Using a GM is simply, in the context of the game rules, a recommended method of organizing play.

You can GM a game of Malifaux, X-Wing the Miniatures Game, Freebooter's Fate, or Force on Force the same way, without ever changing the rules.

Now, it would be perfectly reasonable to say that in a game like D&D, because there are certain gaps in the rules, such as in setting up that randomly generated encounter, a GM is necessary in order to bridge that gap. And this was certainly contemplated in the design of the game. As PsychoticStorm said, a GM is expected to do the game designer's work.

Games that do not contemplate a GM can ill afford such gaps, unless the players themselves are expected to bridge them. It would be like a wargame with no deployment rules. Yet at the same time, some wargames that are not popularly considered to be GM'd games do, indeed, have such gaps.

Your point is well-taken in that games that have these types of dead spaces in the rules are more "intangible." But I do not think that there is a direct correlation to GMing. Especially since, on the flip side, there are plenty of GM'd games that are rigidly defined. Take a look at Hero Quest.

weeble1000 wrote:



Think about Dungeons and Dragons. What part of the game rules, the actual mechanics of the game, are devoted to the Dungeon Master?

None.

Not entirely true....


There's the entire Dungeon Master's guide. Plus, there's the various Monster Manuals, etc.

That players have roughly the same access to these things (outside of the game) as the GM, are of no consequence to the game itself.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

weeble1000 wrote:



Think about Dungeons and Dragons. What part of the game rules, the actual mechanics of the game, are devoted to the Dungeon Master?

None.

Not entirely true....


There's the entire Dungeon Master's guide. Plus, there's the various Monster Manuals, etc.

That players have roughly the same access to these things (outside of the game) as the GM, are of no consequence to the game itself.

I don't follow your point. What part of those rules requires a GM, not as a preferred means of organizing a game, but literally requires the presence of a participant with the responsibility of adjudicating the game?

What I am suggesting is that within the context of the rules set, a DM is not terribly different from the other players. This thread is directed to discussing the difference between a GM'd table top game and a table top game without a GM, right? Well if the GM's function in the context of the game system is simply to control the actions of an adversary, that is not a role that requires special powers of adjudication different from those of an opponent in a table top wargame.

So what makes the GM a GM? What makes GM'd games different? How does that relate to conscious decisions about game design? When, how, and why does a game system benefit from the inclusion of a participant dedicated to adjudicating the game?

You need a GM when there is something about the game system that does not work unless a human being is present to adjudicate it.

In an RPG, you don't need someone to tell the story. You don't even need someone dedicated to controlling antagonists. So the fact the D&D is an RPG doesn't mean it needs or benefits from a GM. But D&D is an adversarial game at its core. It's rules are vastly weighted towards resolving armed conflict. In fact, D&D is basically a table top wargame.

Somebody has to control the adversary. In D&D the game says that this should be handled by a GM who also adjudicates everything else in the game. But to what degree is that a preferred method of organizing the game? Do the rules have to be changed in order to organize the game differently? If so, how? Answering that helps to tell you what function the GM is really serving in the game.

weeble1000 wrote:

But D&D is an adversarial game at its core. It's rules are vastly weighted towards resolving armed conflict. In fact, D&D is basically a table top wargame.

I will give you that first point, as the game is typically the PC party "vs." the GM.

2nd. Lol wut?
3rd... see directly above.



You do realize that if you have a good GM, you get the same XP for running away from, or avoiding (thus "solving") a conflict. You also gain XP from doing things like sneaking around a castle, or picking locks, climbing a wall, crossing a rope bridge over a 1000 foot chasm, etc. In fact, if you're doing the game right, you really don't "need" to bring in anything even resembling a table top wargame.

Certainly, it would seem that the bulk of the rule books are devoted fighting, but that's because that is also where the most complication, and the most interacting rules come into play, but unless 5th ed. is significantly different than anything I've played, the rules are not "significantly weighted" towards fighting.

D&D is not the only RPG. It would be useful to look at the role of the GM in other RPGs as well.

(The concept of an RPG being PCs versus the GM seems to me to be a modern invention.)

 Kilkrazy wrote:

(The concept of an RPG being PCs versus the GM seems to me to be a modern invention.)

Agreed. While I think it isn't "wrong" to view most RPGs in that light, it is certainly a highly simplified way of viewing it.

I mean, GM's typically take the roll of:

-quest giver
-barkeep
-barmaid
-random townsfolk
-mayor
-king
-deity
-ogre, orc, kobold, elder dragon..... etc. etc.
-"nature"
-bridges
-killer gazebos
-narrator

Basically, they are literally EVERYTHING that isn't the "PC party" I mean, if the players themselves are the nouns and verbs, the GM is the adjective and pronoun that hold and guide the story. As the GM in my longest running DnD campaign told us when we started, "I'm not here to be against you, I'm here to have fun as well" By this, he was referring to the idea that in any combat encounter, the GM had the goal of a TPK; and basically saying that he thought this way of thinking was in general, pretty dumb.

 Swastakowey wrote:
Each player has a map of the battlefield they draw before the battle, a chart of tanks and silhouettes and a a list of their forces. The 2 players must sit so they are looking at the table from model perspective. (so you arent above your models etc). They then direct the GM to place models solely on their orders by word. They must distinguish enemy models by the chart and execute orders by word with the GM interpreting them.

One of the magazines had a fog of war style game, where Rick Priestly was in another room viewing/controlling the action from a webcam on the table. The camera would follow about his commander so he could only see what the commander could.

Keep in mind, ther eis nothing inherent to RPGs that "require" a GM. There are many GMless RPGs out there.

Why as a games deisgner, would I create a game that required a GM? If I did design a game witha GM, would I still be considered proficient at my job as a games designer?

 Easy E wrote:
If I did design a game witha GM, would I still be considered proficient at my job as a games designer?

Probably, look at the guys at WotC, or the people who make Pathfinder. Sure there's nothing that absolutely says, "thou MUST have a DM in order to partake of this merriment"

It's why you have the short campaign books like "King of the Trollhaunt Warrens" and "thunderspire labrynth".... if done correctly, a party of people can play those games without the benefit of a GM/DM, but I would still maintain that most of the time, the experiences are enhanced when one member of the party doesn't have "god-like knowledge"

 Easy E wrote:

Why as a games deisgner, would I create a game that required a GM? If I did design a game witha GM, would I still be considered proficient at my job as a games designer?

I don't see a reason why not, it takes skill to design GMed games, in different areas than non GMed games, especially on what rules to leave out, but never the less a good game that requires a GM is a demanding task that does not devaluate the skills of its designer.


An interesting side topic especially since we have X-com on the table is what people view on apps taking over part or the complete role of a GM?

I don't think it is in any way a failure of game design to have a GM. Some kinds of games don't even work without one.

Also even supposedly tight rule sets do end up with GMs in the form of tournament organisers/judges who have to step in now and again to interpret rules

the alternative is GWs dice off whenever a disagreement breaks out which may lead to a rule being interpreted 2 (or more) different ways in the same tournament

Umpires at tournaments are a different thing to someone running or facilitating a game. They are just an ultimate source of decision about rules disputes. You can still play the game without them.