overgeeked
B/X Known World
Absolutely fantastic video from Black Lodge Games. If only there were more referees who took this to heart.
Be a GAME-MASTER, not a DIRECTOR
- Thread starter overgeeked
- Start date
Good video, it nicely refutes a bad set of expectations foisted onto GM's and woven into player expectations in recent years.
Laurefindel
Legend
I’m on the fence about this.
A gamemaster is not there to guide or direct the players’ acting, so in that sense GM and (movie) directors are very different.
But otherwise, framing the action, choosing how NPCs are introduced, choosing how locations and people are described to set an ambiance, incorporating as many or as little details as wanted, setting the pace of the story, deciding to put more or less emphasis on themes and mood, etc - these are all director things. Heck, just choosing which game/setting/campaign to play is an act of directing. A referee only has to know the rules and how to enforce them fairly. A good gamemaster is much more than that.
At any case, my best games played as a player were what I would describe as “well-directed”, yet none of them were railroaded and player agency was never questioned or compromised.
[edit] despite my comments, the video has good advice, especially about relenting control over everything, putting too much pressure on yourself, and not trying to control the outcome of player actions. Perhaps this is where I disagree with the title; directors have no control over the outcome of the action to start with - this is the purview of the writer or author of the script - but at this point I’m just arguing over semantics…
A gamemaster is not there to guide or direct the players’ acting, so in that sense GM and (movie) directors are very different.
But otherwise, framing the action, choosing how NPCs are introduced, choosing how locations and people are described to set an ambiance, incorporating as many or as little details as wanted, setting the pace of the story, deciding to put more or less emphasis on themes and mood, etc - these are all director things. Heck, just choosing which game/setting/campaign to play is an act of directing. A referee only has to know the rules and how to enforce them fairly. A good gamemaster is much more than that.
At any case, my best games played as a player were what I would describe as “well-directed”, yet none of them were railroaded and player agency was never questioned or compromised.
[edit] despite my comments, the video has good advice, especially about relenting control over everything, putting too much pressure on yourself, and not trying to control the outcome of player actions. Perhaps this is where I disagree with the title; directors have no control over the outcome of the action to start with - this is the purview of the writer or author of the script - but at this point I’m just arguing over semantics…
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MichaelSomething
Legend
PCs can't thwart your plot if you don't have one.
Celebrim
Legend
I loathe director stance GMing, but I think people tend to focus on the wrong aspect of what's wrong with it. What's really wrong isn't that you have a story in mind, but that you are trying to tell players how to play their characters - which is one of the core aspects of being a director.
You might not be a director, but you are definitely a cinematographer.
You might not be a director, but you are definitely a cinematographer.
aramis erak
Legend
A cinematographer for the visually impaired.
Laurefindel
Legend
While I understand and agree with what you mean about GMs who shouldn’t make it about their own story, it is not the director’s task or responsibility to create the story either. It never was. Authors make the story, directors bring it to the screen or to the stage. A GM absolutely is a director, but it is not a playwright or writer. There are author movies where the director also happens to be the writer but even in these cases, the same person is still wearing two distinct hats.
In a RPG, the GM doesn’t create the outcome; the players take decisions and the dice decide of the outcome. The GM then puts it all in context, just like the director does not write the play or the movie script, or decides on what happens when. Director put this action and script into scenes visible for the public, which in this analogy, is exactly what the game master does.
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TheSword
Legend
Disappointing that this video starts by misrepresenting another DM’s good advice about GM burnout, and advertising itself with a promotional image mocking another DM. I don’t share MM’s style but it’s not nice to see this. The guy couldn’t make his point any other way?
There is a fundamental misunderstanding in the video that writing is recording what is going to happen, that a writer can only be a novelist. In truth writing is any time you put a pen to paper to fix an idea about the game. Coming up with a description of the the local forest - that’s writing. Determining the goals of the local bandit leader - that’s writing. Deciding there is a local bandit leader - also writing. Deciding the 10 options on your random encounter table - still writing. It can take a lot of time and while some DMs are able to convincingly wing it without determining these things in advance, many others are pretty transparent or really struggle to do it meaningfully. So writing some notes first helps massively and mocking DMs for preparing is a pretty snide blow.
At no point in MM’s intro clip did he say determine what the PCs were going to do. He just used the phrase tangle in a narrative thread. While sometimes these tangles are good, I’ve also seen a game bog down because one player decides to just hare off in a random direction following some scheme while the rest of the players are left twiddling their thumbs because they’re interested in the main thread. MM in all fairness does not tell his players what to do. He presents convincing scenarios for them that propel the action and create an interesting story.
Don’t force your players to do things they don’t want to. That’s good advice. I feel it could have been said plainer, and without being a douche.
There is a fundamental misunderstanding in the video that writing is recording what is going to happen, that a writer can only be a novelist. In truth writing is any time you put a pen to paper to fix an idea about the game. Coming up with a description of the the local forest - that’s writing. Determining the goals of the local bandit leader - that’s writing. Deciding there is a local bandit leader - also writing. Deciding the 10 options on your random encounter table - still writing. It can take a lot of time and while some DMs are able to convincingly wing it without determining these things in advance, many others are pretty transparent or really struggle to do it meaningfully. So writing some notes first helps massively and mocking DMs for preparing is a pretty snide blow.
At no point in MM’s intro clip did he say determine what the PCs were going to do. He just used the phrase tangle in a narrative thread. While sometimes these tangles are good, I’ve also seen a game bog down because one player decides to just hare off in a random direction following some scheme while the rest of the players are left twiddling their thumbs because they’re interested in the main thread. MM in all fairness does not tell his players what to do. He presents convincing scenarios for them that propel the action and create an interesting story.
Don’t force your players to do things they don’t want to. That’s good advice. I feel it could have been said plainer, and without being a douche.
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