This week’s Game Wish from Turn of a Friendly Die
What is your idea of the relationship between GM and player? Is the GM a host, an adversary, an enabler…?
I see the GMs role as a lot of things. Currently my GMing consists of running a couple of on-line (PBeM and PBMB) games, and the occasional one-shot convention-style scenario. In the past I have run a long-running face-to-face campaign.
While it’s possible to have a game without a GM, such a game will have a radically different form than a traditional RPG – it would either need a lot of trust between the players, or a rigidly mechanical system. But I’m digressing a bit here; let’s get back to the subject in hand.
- Enabler: Certainly, since a traditional style RPG cannot take place without someone willing to GM.
- Adventure or setting creator: While I do sometimes run published scenarios for one-shot games, all my longer games take place in my own settings. It’s the GM’s job to create a believable world with enough challenging things in it to keep the players interested. I hope I’ve succeeded with Kalyr
- Player: Especially in on-line games, which are often more story-centric than game-mechanic-centric, I sometimes feels that the GM is as much a player as the rest of the group, with the game world as their character.
- Adversary? No way! This just isn’t my style.
- Storyteller? Again, no way! Overly linear railroaded plotlines aren’t my style either. The game may be a story, but it’s a story for the players to tell, as much as the GM.
