Dismantling the Game Master

I think it is strange that people would do ANY of the PC work for players. That is their job, not mine.

I often have the same reaction when I see discussion of GMs managing all the mechanics that I see as player-facing in some games. I'd never have even thought of doing that throughout my career; even with new players, I'd do some handholding, but they were still expected to do their own character mechanics.
 

log in or register to remove this ad

I often have the same reaction when I see discussion of GMs managing all the mechanics that I see as player-facing in some games. I'd never have even thought of doing that throughout my career; even with new players, I'd do some handholding, but they were still expected to do their own character mechanics.
I once tried to keep track of PC hit points for "immersion" and hated doing it, so quickly gave it back to the players.
 

If I'm asking my players to do more work outside of them just playing their characters, then they will start learning the rules. I'm afraid they will learn some rules I don't want them to know about, because it may restrict their ability to freely play their characters.
I don't worry about that in the slightest, because I take a pretty loose attitude to rules, and am always willing to discard them. I prefer not to have copies of the character sheets, because if I know the fine details of the characters' abilities, I'm concerned that I will target events in the game too tightly on them. That ruins suspension of disbelief for me.
 

I once tried to keep track of PC hit points for "immersion" and hated doing it, so quickly gave it back to the players.

Though I somewhat understand it may have come from traditions that are just foreign to me. I was pretty shocked a year or so ago when, while rereading the old OD&D books to discover they assumed the GM was going to roll the dice to generate PCs. I never saw that done with any group I bumped up against, but I'd guess, given it was there, that it was done that way somewhere, and they considered it the standard way things were done.
 

Though I somewhat understand it may have come from traditions that are just foreign to me. I was pretty shocked a year or so ago when, while rereading the old OD&D books to discover they assumed the GM was going to roll the dice to generate PCs. I never saw that done with any group I bumped up against, but I'd guess, given it was there, that it was done that way somewhere, and they considered it the standard way things were done.
Maybe OD&D just assumed the GM was the only one with dice, and we know that PLAYERS DO NOT TOUCH THE DM'S DICE.
 


I don't worry about that in the slightest, because I take a pretty loose attitude to rules, and am always willing to discard them. I prefer not to have copies of the character sheets, because if I know the fine details of the characters' abilities, I'm concerned that I will target events in the game too tightly on them. That ruins suspension of disbelief for me.
Exactly!
If I don't share the duties, they will never know that I rarely ever look at Gamemaster Guides. ;)
 

The key is bringing them into D&D with... not D&D. Shadowdark. OSE. 5 Torches Deep. There are lots of introductory games that give the D&D experience and teach the basics of rolling a die and adding a number, then comparing it to another number. 5E (and Pathfinder) are both pretty bad introductory games, exactly because they assume the GM is going to do stupid amounts of work to make sure players don't run away screaming.
Ick. No thanks! :)

Like I said, I don't mind the work. And actually prefer the work over the style of gaming most OSR is for.
 

. . . the massive burden that 5e puts on the DM, especially with bookkeeping -- doing most of the rolling, keeping track of damage dealt and NPC hp, etc.
Well, that makes it easier for WotC to sell D&D Beyond and whatever their Next Great VTT will be. Don't forget character conditions, reactions used, darkvision, spell slots used, 9 tracking sheets, and knowing how character classes work (because a lot of players don't).

My investigation led me to the Borg games (specifically Pirate Borg) which lifts a lot of that weight; for example, the DM doesn't roll for the NPCs to attack but rather the players roll to defend and all the DM has to do is keep track of the bad guys' hp. Combat moves so much faster when the bottleneck of everything having to flow through the DM is removed.

Another perk of Borg is the abundance of random tables for every little thing instead of expecting the DM to constantly improvise.
Cypher system puts rolling on the PCs too. Random Table Roller is a great PC job - as long as the PCs should know what the results are.

One part of being a GM that I've peeled off and handed to the players was treasure placement.

. . . Then I realized: the players care far more than I do about what treasures they find. So for randomly-placed loot, I describe it like this: "You find 230 pp, 3300 gp, 2 gems worth 350gp each--Bob, what kind of gems are those? You also find a weapon +1--James, what kind of weapon is it?"
Oh, yeah. I remember that time-sink. A GM's notes could double in size if they included all of the NPC's suggested, pre-rolled treasure. I wonder what a conflict-of-interest rule might do here: the less useful or valuable a player's idea for looted treasure is, the more XP the PCs get instead.

On the topic of sharing some of the GM load, we often have a rules / logistics buddy for games where there is a chunk of this. For example, when we play Savage Worlds a second person will often collect in cards after a player has had their turn, and shuffle the deck for the GM after a joker has been drawn.

Savage Worlds has an interesting rule, as well. The assumption is that the players will run any NPC allies in combat rather than the GM running both NPC allies and opposition. That can be great fun and make really big skirmishes possible.
It's good to see that SW has GM-accelerators, with a slogan like Fun! Fast! Furious! (or whatever the SW slogan is...) At least Vin approves.
Fast And Furious Smiling GIF by The Fast Saga
 

Ick. No thanks! :)

Like I said, I don't mind the work. And actually prefer the work over the style of gaming most OSR is for.
OSE in particular is just B/X, so you can play it any way you want. But I get you.

When I run 5E at cons, I have a friend of mine build the pre-gens and put together a packet of all the needed info for that character (feats, class abilities, spells, etc) which is a lot of help for casual players. When I run Shadowdark at cons, I use Shadowdarklings.net and the character sheets it prints out hold all of the rules you need for that character in one sheet (2 for casters).

For myself, the extra load of 5E does not provide an equivalent amount of fun to justify the work.
 

Trending content

Remove ads

Top