The Blog of Roon

Tough one in Game WISH this week. What is, or should be, the relationship between GM and players?

I hope I’m not the only responder whose immediate instinct was to discuss the GM’s relationship to the game universe. This of course does not answer the question.

I found out a little bit ago that my husband and I have fairly widely variant expectations of GMs. When I explained the entire recent debacle in my gaming group to him, he asked me where the GM was. After all, it’s the GM’s business to ensure that characters in his/her game fit the game and the rest of the party, right? The offending character should never have been greenlighted.

“Uh… our GMs don’t work that way,” was the best I could muster. Well, they don’t. Aside from ensuring that a new character fits the universe, they let the party muddle along on its own. Maybe that is part of the reason we keep getting into messes; there are no clear expectations regarding party unity or party alignment.

On the other hand, I doubt such expectations would have avoided the problem, as the player in question was emphatically not playing the alignment and personality he claimed for his character.

Anyhow. I suppose what this proves is that there is no one single relationship between GM and players. The GM must step in and out of various roles, including but not limited to:

• Referee. Obvious enough.
• Mediator. When there’s friction, it’s the GM’s business to see what can be done about it.
• Director. Who sets the scene, guides the characters, challenges them to react properly, if not the GM?
• Event manager. Unfortunately.
• Friend, I earnestly hope.

Off to see what other people remarked on that I forgot.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 30th, 2002 at 11:30 am and is filed under Gaming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.