Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8165568" data-attributes="member: 42582">To add to these posts about referees being fair: the role of a referee in a wargame is not wildly different from the role of a referee in a football game. The referee applies the rules and, when necessary, arbitrates between the two sides.The idea that the role of a GM in a sandbox resembles this is not really plausible. For a start, there are no sides. Next, to the extent that the players experience "opposition" it is being provided by the GM.This also drives home how different a sandbox of the sort [USER=5636]@estar[/USER] or [USER=85555]@Bedrockgames[/USER] is describing is from a Moldvay-style dungeon. In a Moldvay-style dungeon there is no opposition or antagonism: the dungeon is primarily a puzzle, and the monsters are threats that are encountered in the course of exploring it. The GM has to adjudicate them fairly - in some ways it's a more sophisticated version of a boardgame, and part of what makes it more sophisticated is that the players can make "moves" that engage the fiction. In this sort of play, the GM comes close to being a referee - designing the dungeon is a bit like preparing the field of battle for a wargame, and adjudicating the fiction can be done (hopefully; ideally) fairly and dispassionately.But in a "living, breathing" world things are completely different. Designing such a world is not at all like preparing the field of battle, except in the most metaphorical sense. Deciding things like whether a given NPC is alive or dead and what a given faction will do in response to encroachments on its turf is not like adjudicating the fiction in the way a Moldvay GM has to.Classic Traveller is interesting here, because it consistently uses the term "referee" to describe the GM, but the role is nothing like a wargame or dungeon-adjudicating referee.</blockquote>

Verification