D&D General Dungeon Master or Referee?

[Marc_C]

I am not running a game with two competing teams of players, so I am not a Referee. I don't run hexcrawls or dungeon crawls, so I am not a Dungeon Master. I like cooperative games and help the players tell their story, so I tend to steal Storyteller from White Wolf games. That name really fits a lot of modern games, beyond just 5E D&D.

A storyteller is someone who is telling a story to other people listening passively. Never liked that WWG use that term.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

A storyteller is someone who is telling a story to other people listening passively. Never liked that WWG use that term.

Yeah, I never used that either. Though I just generally find these sort of gimmicky variant titles for the gamemaster to be rather embarrassing.

 

[Li Shenron]

Do you see yourself as a referee or a dungeon master?

Deity.

 

[Tonguez]

Game* Master is much cooler than Referee, it implies mastery and authority in the game system. The GM is not a neutral arbiter

Dungeon master is also cool but using GM breaks out of the dungeon confines and opens up much more varied setting possibilities

 

[Tonguez]

"In older D&D books the person behind the screen is often called the Referee"

Which books?

The original Dungeons & Dragons 1974 used the term "referee" but the term was dead by 1976. The term Game Master was used in Dragon magazine in 1975 and by 1976 the geek community had started using Dungeon Master though it wasnt officially used until 1979 AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide

 

[turnip_farmer]

I require my players to address me as 'My Lord and Master', but I will accept 'Your Eminence' if it's delivered in a suitably reverent tone.

 

[Aldarc]

Why be a Referee or a Dungeon Master when you can be the Walrus?

 

[SkidAce]

I use Dungeon Master or DM if I'm playing Dungeons & Dragons, Gamemaster or GM if it's some other system.

Same here.

 

[pemerton]

The original Dungeons & Dragons 1974 used the term "referee" but the term was dead by 1976. The term Game Master was used in Dragon magazine in 1975 and by 1976 the geek community had started using Dungeon Master though it wasnt officially used until 1979 AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide

The term "Dungeon Master" and the acronym DM both appear in the AD&D PHB. So does the word "referee", which is used strictly synonymously.

since the DM is in control of those opposing teams, isn’t having them also be the referee of that competition kind of a conflict of interests? A referee is supposed to be a neutral third party, but in D&D there are only two parties. Unless the players are competing and the DM is mediating it, referee doesn’t seem like an accurate analogy to me.

This sort of incoherence in the framing of RPG participant roles has a long history, as Ron Edwards has noted:

From the introduction to RuneQuest, second edition (The Chaosium, 1978, 1979, 1980; specific author for this text unknown; game authors are Steve Perrin, Ray Turney, Steve Henderson, and Warren James):

The title of the game, RuneQuest, describes its goal. The player creates one or more characters, known as adventurers, and playes them in various scenarios, designed by a Referee. The Adventurer has the use of combat, magic, and other skills, and treasure. The Referee has the use of assorted monsters, traps, and his own wicked imagination to keep the Adventurer from his goal within the rules of the game. A surviving Adventurer gains experience in fighting, magic, and other skills, as well as money to purchase further training.​

Now all that's pretty Gamist stuff of a late 1970s vintage, right? Get this, which follows immediately:

The adventurer progresses in this way until he is so proficient that he comes to the attention of the High Priests, sages, and gods. At this point he has the option to join a Rune Cult. Joining such a cult gives him many advantages, not the least of which is aid from the god of the cult.

Acquiring a Rune by joining such a cult is the goal of the game, for only in gathering a Rune may a character take the next step, up into the ranks of Hero, and perhaps Superhero.​

All right, that bit about joining cults still seems kind of Gamist, right? About getting more effective and so on? Great ... except that the GM controls the High Priests and sages. Why would he, whose job was just stated to be to "keep the Adventurer from his goal," have them recognize the Adventurer in the first place? Either they do, and the GM must abandon the stated goal, or they don't, and that whole paragraph becomes gibberish.​

At least in the case of classic D&D, I think the way out of the incoherence is to identify two distinct roles for the DM/referee: in advance of play s/he designs the "arena" for play - the dungeon or wilderness map-and-key, associated random encounter tables, etc; and then during play s/he is a neutral referee in the free kriegsspiel style.

That division of labour breaks down basically as soon as the way play takes place requires the DM/referee not just to adjudicate established fiction but to make up new fiction that serves some sort of adversary role; which is to say any time play breaks away from map-and-key adjudication. Urban adventuring and any sort of subtle social interaction are probably the most obvious ways where this happens.

EDIT: Classic Traveller (1st published 1977) calls the GM the referee, although it anticipated plenty of urban adventuring and subtle social interaction right out of the gate! And more generally anticipates that the referee will establish adversity during the course of play and not just in advance of it. So in that case "referee" was probably a misnomer from the outset. Though I still use it when talking about GMing Traveller.

 

[R_Chance]

Referee comes from wargames, going all the way back to the Prussian kriegsspiel. Dungeon Master used to literally mean you had created a big dungeon that you ran players through, which is an increasingly inaccurate term for the role in D&D.

I still say "DM," but I'm trending toward changing my usage to "referee."

When we played miniature wargame campaigns (WW II, Napoleonic, 18th Century, medieval, or fantasy courtesy of Chainmail) we had referees. They interpreted rules (rarely needed), set up battlefields for miniatures when forces met on the campaign map, and allowed for "secret" movement as commanders maneuvered their forces across the campaign area.

The DM does a lot more. My players wanted to know where they came from (not just appearing at the entrance to the dungeon), and more about the world / nationalities, where different races came from, and how they related. I used a campaign area I set up for a Chainmail fantasy miniature campaign. Our campaigns were pretty detailed, taxes and loot was collected, troops were recruited / trained, and the next years campaigns were plotted out during the winter / off season (excepting WW II). The move to D&D was pretty smooth and a lot of background was there for the players who wanted it (not everyone did). Adding / expanding on this added a lot of work to the DMs role. A lot more than just a referee.

It continued to get more complex and detailed as it went, but my game came with overland, town, and dungeons from the beginning along with weather and a sense of time passing. And wars in the background to complicate matters