Hasbro-brand Dungeons & Dragons is a contrived identification with nerd subcultures to manufacture an anti-authoritarian identity and make millions. The $39.99 you paid for the Explorer's Guide to Wildemount would be better used buying art supplies to create your own campaign world.
Ahem. Where was I? Oh, yes, the following quote from
@Campbell has me thinking, um, thoughts. Lots of thoughts.
For what it's worth I think any group should be expected to make the game their own. I just think that should be a communal process. I believe that the experience is best when we create it together. The GM is a player like any other player.
I should start by saying that I think Campbell is smart, articulate, and has good opinions (probably smells good, too!), so this isn't about Campbell, but I am using his quote (most of which I agree with!) to illustrate a point that I see repeatedly stated that I very much disagree with!
My assertion:
In D&D, the DM is NOT a player.
Before delving into this topic, let me start with a few caveats.
First, inasmuch as someone is saying that the DM is just a person, and other players are just people, and we are all just people ... I think that's a great sentiment, and I share it. But saying that the DM and the players are just people is not the same as saying that the DM is a player.
Second, I am going to be discussing D&D. This is in the D&D forum. The quote I was responding to was also from a thread that I posted in the D&D forum. There are a lot of TTRPGs out there. There are some that function without a DM, some that are (arguably) board games, and some that get rid of the "TT" altogether (LARPing, improv comedy, but I repeat myself ....). While many people advocate for different styles, and methods, of gaming (which is good!), that's not really what I am interested in. If you have examples of TTRPGs that are NOT D&D, that have a GM as player, that's great! But I am interested in the question of the DM as player in D&D.
1. Common Usage. You know we poor DMs have to show ourselves in society from time to time, just to remind the public that we are not savages.
Not to be pedantic, but there is a reason that we have different words for "player" and "DM." These different terms are baked into the game and rules of the game, and even the basic nomenclature of every edition's books (
Player's Handbook,
Dungeon Master's Guide). If you have a game, and you advertise that you need players, and someone shows up, you wouldn't say, "Oh, thank goodness, you get to run the game! After all, you're a player, therefore a DM." By the same token, if a DM is running the game, and in the middle of it says (without warning or prior consent), "Eh, Johnny, it's time for you to DM, because after all, I'm a player," that would be .... not kosher. This is dead horse that does not need beating, but the reason we have different words for player and DM is because they occupy different roles in the game.
2. Division of Roles. Posting on internet forums is the act of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies.
What is one of the most iconic images of AD&D? That's right ... you know it. Otus. Trampier. DM SCREEN. You know it, if you played back then, because you stared at that screen from the other side (if you were a player) for hours, days, weeks, years. The divisions of roles between DM and player is not just codified in the terms and the rules of the game, in many D&D games there is actually a
physical presence that exists that demarcates this distinction. I don't want to belabor this point, either; there are DMs that prefer to roll their dice in the open, and DMs that don't mind having maps, or notes, in the open, but it is also the case that every single edition of D&D has produced DM's screens. Not to go all Pink Floyd on you, but this wall isn't a metaphor.
In the most recent edition, 5e, the difference is put like this:
In the DUNGEONS & DRAGONS game, each player creates an adventurer (also called a character) and teams up with other adventurers (played by friends). Working together, the group might explore a dark dungeon, a ruined city, a haunted castle, a lost temple deep in a jungle, or a lava-filled cavern beneath a mysterious mountain. The adventurers can solve puzzles, talk with other characters, battle fantastic monsters, and discover fabulous magic items and other treasure.
One player, however, takes on the role of the Dungeon Master (DM), the game's lead storyteller and referee. The DM creates adventures for the characters, who navigate its hazards and decide which paths to explore. The DM might describe the entrance to Castle Ravenloft, and the players decide what they want their adventurers to do. Will they walk across the dangerously weathered drawbridge? Tie themselves together with rope to minimize the chance that someone will fall if the drawbridge gives way? Or cast a spell to carry them over the chasm? Then the DM determines the results of the adventurers' actions and narrates what they experience. Because the DM can improvise to react to anything the players attempt, D&D is infinitely flexible, and each adventure can be exciting and unexpected.
PHB 5.
Later, the three steps of How To Play are:
1. The DM describes the environment. ...
2. The players describe what they want to do. ...
3. The DM narrates the results of the adventurers' actions.
PHB 6.
Again, this should be basic, but it is important within the context of the division between the player and the DM. To use an analogy; if a group of people get together to play sports, and one of the players takes on the role of the referee for the other players, then that referee is
no longer a player, and the other players are not referees. This isn't to say that people can't get together and play a pick-up game and each call their own fouls, but once a single person is the referee, that person is no longer a player. The reason should be obvious- imagine the neutral arbiter of the game also playing. It would seem ... odd. Which leads to my last point ....
3. The Division of Roles Matters in D&D. I will explain my principles to you, and if you don't like them? Well .... I have other principles.
When I am playing D&D, one of my biggest warning signs when it comes to DMs is simple- the "DMPC" (sometimes called the DMNPC). Sure, maybe someone, somewhere, has done this well. Anything is possible! But IMO, the DM is already in control of the world; the NPCs, the monsters, the politics, the economics, what is going on "off stage." For a DM to want to control her own PC is an indication that this isn't enough; the DM also wants to play. To circle back to the original quote- the DM is a player, like any other player. This has never worked well in any campaign I've been a part of, because the DM is not a player.
OTOH, when I'm a DM or a player, I get concerned about players that are trying to "DM" from the player position. To use the three-step "how to play" loop, above, different players will have different facility with the rules, or with the ability to narrate, and I have seen players attempt to force certain results by usurping certain steps (such as narrating results, when other players are not doing so).
This is a fundamental issue for me when it comes to D&D, which is why I thought about it for a while when I saw the quote above, which is representative of a number of times that I have seen this. Again, there are other TTRPGs that are built in a different way, but when it comes to D&D, there is a distinction between players and the DM that is useful to maintain, both as a matter of language and in terms of the roles that they play at the table.
