Why would anybody want to GM?

[Clinton R. Nixon]

1.b.  Social accolades.  This sorta goes with the previous one.  The GM GMs because they want the social recognition of the group; they want to be the center of attention.

I consider both 1.a. and 1.b. to be really dysfunctional, but I think they're pretty common.

Really? 'Cause I missed that one, but I'll definitely mark it down as a reason I GM. You see, people really like the guy who will GM. And me, I love to be loved. Each week, I think "I can't wait to show them the crazy shit I came up with this week."

But, it makes a better game. I'm motivated each week to top my performance from the week before.

[Bankuei]

Hi Clinton,

And I'd bet that "GM-by-default" equals an unhappy GM.

More-or-less.  I think of it as, "Not completely fulfilled GM"(ah, rpg to sex analogy applies YET AGAIN).  

See, the thing is I enjoy both doing many of the things you are talking about with GMing, but I also like being able to be in the role of the protagonist as well.  I've always hated it when GMs steal the spotlight from the protagonists to shine on their "favorite NPCs", and so, I don't do it when GMing.  I like being on either end of the the facilitator/protagonist stick equally.  As a player, the problem I often face is that many people are Sim by default, and most importantly- deprotagonizing by default.

Chris

[joshua neff]

This is a really interesting question, and one I've been thinking about quite a bit recently.

I used to think I took the role of GM because I was a frustrated novelist. Well, I'm currently in the middle (almost literally, as I'm about halfway done) of writing a novel, and I've found (to my surprise and delight) that writing fiction is absolutely nothing like being a GM, and the rewards I get by writing are completely different from the rewards I get as GM.

Part of it is that, like others have mentioned, it just falls to me. With most of the people I've played with in the past 5 years or so, Im the only person that will run the games I really want to play. (Mike Holmes has been running HeroQuest, but not in Glorantha--if I want Glorantha, I have to run the game myself.)

I also realize that, like Clinton, I like the feeling I get, the social reinforcement of "Wow, Josh sure throws some cool shit at us! We love it when he GMs!" And I really like coming up with cool shit to throw at players.

Which leads into: I really enjoy coming up with cool setting stuff, cool NPCs, cool plot bangs and throwing them at people. I love seeing what players do with them, I love being surprised by players as they come up with stuff that's far cooler than I ever could have come up with. I like doing the prepwork for the game (in fact, if I'm not running a game, I do prepwork for games I may or may not run in the future, because I get antsy if I'm not doing game prep). I like being the facilitator, I like being the bassist in the band. And I often think that I'm a better GM than I am a player,

[CPXB]

Really? 'Cause I missed that one, but I'll definitely mark it down as a reason I GM. You see, people really like the guy who will GM. And me, I love to be loved. Each week, I think "I can't wait to show them the crazy shit I came up with this week."

But, it makes a better game. I'm motivated each week to top my performance from the week before.

I'll concede that I might have marked this one as dysfunctional because of bad experiences with it.  Thinking on it, a desire to receive the praise of one's peers, if moderate, is not bad.  It can drive a person towards greater excellence.

But I've seen a rather darker side of it, where the GM feels that they deserve special treatment because they GM -- not just getting the best seat at the table, either, or having the players buy the GM some pizza in acknowledgment of the work the GM does for the game.  But using the position of GM to control the players; the players OWE the GM in a variety of social ways because the GM GMs.  Which is why I placed it under the same catagory as control; some GMs GM to control the game in any unhealthy way (for the sake of control) while some GMs GM to control the players.

But I can definitely see some GMs wanting to get recognition for their competence.  I think that's generally healthy.  Heck, I do it, too.  But I was thinking of those BAD GUYS who do it.   (Again, thinking of very specific people who are part of my gaming experience.)

[Kat Miller]

Wow, to answer Ron’s Question about what I meant by GM, I going to use Clinton’s ideas on GM Duties:  

a) Traditional GM duties: making up the world, playing NPCs, introducing conflict.
b) Traffic cop duties: Apportioning the above duties out and refereeing.
c) The facilitator: the central social and authoritative focus for the game

I was Looking at the GM more in the terms of the Traffic Cop and the Facilitator.  I was wondering why certain people choose to do these tasks AND after they choose to do them what they look for in the games they run.  

I’m looking at my own Gming history.  I became a DM out of necessity.  I wanted to play more than there were games looking for new (female) players.   Being a DM allows me easier access to other gamers, because when I was younger it seemed that there was always more gamers than DM’s.  I still like to play so I gravitated to players who also DM or encourage other players to DM but still ran more games than I played. (I eventually married my Dungeon Master)  

When Mage came out one of my DnD players bought the game because he wanted to play it.  He  wanted me to run it.  I started to have options on what to run. After Mage I still played DnD but didn’t choose to run it anymore.

Lots of changes have occurred since then, and I have a wealth of games I can play or run at my disposal.  I still end up running more than I get to play.  Both Mike and I get “itchy” to run a game if its been over 6 months between Gming something.

But I’m noticing a difference between games I enjoy playing and games I enjoy running.  It feels like both activities are filling separate voids rather than the same one.  There are some games that while being fun to play do not satisfy something.  If I’m a player for too long a time, I pine to run something.  Mike and I do freeform role play but it doesn’t satisfy his urge for a “real” game, and if he is a player for too long a time then he pines to run a game.

I enjoy playing TORG, but I have no inclination to run it.  Mage is still a game I’ll run if given a chance. MLwM is a game than Mike and I both enjoy running and usually have to negotiate who gets to be Master.  I know that for me certain games are more fulfilling to run than others, but I’m not sure why.  I was looking to see if others feel the same.

That’s why I want to know what influences a person into volunteering to GM and what a person who assumes he will be the GM looks for in a game.  

The responses have been very helpful,
Thank you.

[Vaxalon]

Another role of the GM is to introduce the game in the first place.


When someone suggests a game that the group should play, generally speaking the suggester is the DM.  Not always, but often.

[Lance D. Allen]

Hey Kat,

Just curious, but do you, or have you, ever alternated? As I mentioned in my previous post, both my current group and my last alternated games. My previous group met several times a week, and generally, no one would GM more than one session in a row. My current group meets once a week, and while one of us is willing to GM for a few weeks in a row when there's a gap in the other's game, we usually alternate. This weekend, it was Dogs. Last weekend, it was Riddle.

This allows me to, mostly, fulfill both my urge to play, and my urge to GM. One of these days though, I'm going to try to convince Lx to run a TRoS game, and maybe I'll run a Dogs game.. That way, we both get to PLAY in the games that caught our enthusiasm.

[Kat Miller]

Hi Lance,

married to another GM, I get a good deal of alternating.  Sometimes its tasks, sometimes its Games and sometimes its groups as certain groups we game with don't mesh well with certain games or certain players.  We're lucky to have a number of different venues to game with and luckier still to have 6 or so different gamers willing to take on the Gm tasks for different games.

I'm not looking to figure a way to balance the needs, so much as recognize that there are infact two different needs, and what feeds the GMing need.

I can recognize in myself the times I GM for control -
against gamers I don't trust to GM fairly, but I do trust to play nicely.

I recognize that I do GM for the social perk- to be loved.
Theres a certain high I get when I pull off a good game and the players are beaming at me because they have all had a great time.

I was hoping there was more to the desire to GM than being a controling attention seeking individual.

I am hoping to more fully understand the Gming desire and use what I learn to help game design

[M. J. Young]

I was one of those people who read the rules to the game and told everyone else how to play. We had a small gaming group, playing board games and card games and Atari and pinball and the occasional wargame or bookcase game, and if my wife and I brought a game, I was the one who taught everyone else how to play. If Bob and Margaret (the other anchors of the group, other people drifted in and out) brought a game, Bob was the one who read the rules and explained to everyone how to play.

We treated D&D the same way. My gaming group bought the basic (1E) set for me, I read it, and I explained to them how to play. Since it was part of the rules that only the DM read the rules, that made me the DM. When Bob picked up Gamma World, he was the referee. We got Jan (my wife) to run Metamorphosis Alpha, which she swapped for Star Frontiers (more what she wanted to run), in part so that we would all take turns playing, and we'd have the opportunity to play with each other (Bob and I liked partnering in games, which we couldn't do if one of us was the referee).

After that, I got good at it, and people kept asking me to do it. Periodically eventually someone else would offer to run a game, but logistics usually caused those games to collapse--somehow I had managed to organize things such that I could keep a gaming group together for years, although I don't quite know how as organizational skills have never been my forte.

Also, I gained so much knowledge about how these games work that a lot of guys were afraid to have me as a player. In that regard, I'm reminded of a time when a rather novice player prevailed upon (Multiverser co-author) E. R. Jones to play a solo D&D game with this other guy refereeing. As I understand it, Jones created a character, asking at each step along the way whether he would be allowed to do this, have that, buy the other thing, gradually piecing together his paladin. Then play began. The novice referee had intended to railroad the scenario with a quest of some sort. Jones immediately broke the rails and got out of what the referee intended, leaving the poor guy completely at a loss for what to do next.

I'm not that bad; but I get very focused on play, and I think through these things several layers deep. In one game I recall the referee had established that a colony of orcs that had been peaceful for generations was suddenly raiding the local elves, no known reason. The other players were thinking in terms of busting orc heads and cleaning out the lair. I was thinking in terms of figuring out why they were suddenly so aggressive when they had not been for so long. The answer turned out to be that there was a rather nasty new boss in the area, a human psionicist who was trying to build the beginnings of an army for conquest out of the humanoids he was collecting. I bypassed the orcs and went for him--and the referee found himself scrambling to cover himself as his intended end scenario was suddenly pulled up to the beginning.

It's also worth noting that when I'm a player, I have a very difficult time not landing in the "facilitator" role. Often other players will look to me to provide the focus and direction for the group, but I find that makes me feel like the game is about my character, when it should be about everyone's characters. I really try hard not to take over the group, but it often lands in my lap anyway.

So I think some of us get put in the referee's role because we're good at these games, and you'd rather have someone really good at the game in the referee's chair than in the player's chair when you're the referee.

I get my pleasure here from making the game fun for everyone else, and in finding an outlet for my creative juices. I'm the kind of guy who likes to create things, particularly if others are going to admire them, so that's a big motivation for me. That's probably why I tend to run simulationist games, although I tend to drift a lot more between agenda when I'm on teh player's side of the screen.

--M. J. Young

[Doctor Xero]

To reference Clinton's ideas on GM Duties,

a) Traditional GM duties: making up the world, playing NPCs, introducing conflict.
b) Traffic cop duties: Apportioning the above duties out and refereeing.
c) The facilitator: the central social and authoritative focus for the game

Unlike many people, I do all three of the above well and I find it takes no effort for me to do all three of the above without any risk of dysfunctionality in the gaming group.

At the same time, if I start out doing all three well, I can slowly encourage inexperienced players to risk finding their own conflicts and such, since they feel more secure taking these risks if they know that I can cover for them if they mess up.  For example, when I game mastered, I made certain the quieter players sat nearer me and I always looked directly at them so that they no longer risked being accidentally drowned out by the naturally more aggressive and noisier players.  As game master, I become not only friend and gaming comrade but the social agenda's safety net and training wheels.

There are too few people who have both the abilities and the inclinations to help others by allowing themselves to be made into living safety nets and training wheels.  We become teachers, social workers, nurses, counselors,  dirt-under-the-fingernails philanthropists -- and game masters who can handle all three functions.

Doctor Xero

[Bill Cook]

My experience is very similiar to others who posted. Particularly Lance.

Why do we do it? Good question. For me, it's all I knew. The first game I ever played, I DM'ed. I sure didn't know the rules (I was 12 at the time), but no one could make stuff up like me. After my family moved to Texas, I ran into an existing group with its own DM's. When they said they wanted to play, I just assumed they meant they wanted me to run some campaign. Well, I showed up and ended up .. playing. (I was 16, then.) I learned something very valuable that day: I hated playing RPG's.

And I drove everyone crazy. Not having enough to do, stripped of my familiar powers, I about blew a fuse. When it came my turn to DM, I learned another astounding thing: I had no freaking idea what the rules were.

Time and again, the more learned, bookish players in our group would throw rulings in my face until I resolved to sit down and read the manuals. Then I learned something else: Gary Gygax is a fucking idiot.

So I thought, I know, I'll write rules that make sense. I mean, I was sort of going with my own rules, anyway, without really thinking about it. To be fair and accountable, I'll just write down everything I've been doing and that will fix the nonsense and simplify the drunken alien language.

My "extra chapters" drew mixed reactions. They frowned them down when I was playing but generally humored me when I DM'ed. I found that I liked design even more than DM'ing, and I made more and more changes. Until .. the four-hour fight against seven zombies. They fired me.

********

(Cut forward past college and computer career.) Joining Luke Neatrour's group and discovering the Forge has led to my first ever wa-hoo enjoyment as a player. Seriously. Now, my first attempt is to play the page, in all honesty.

I still prefer to GM. It's hard to express why.

[clehrich]

I'm with CPXB.  Honestly, I think most of the reasons why people want to GM instead of play are really dysfunctional.  I know that's true of me.

I like "facilitator" as the really important role here.  Just the guy who is sort of the occasion of the game, the locus of the game, the one guy you have to have to have quorum.  Sure, he's got some responsibilities too, but those vary wildly.

In my Shadows in the Fog (see weblink below), I use the term Host.  Partly that's because it's a Victorian thing, but also for me I think that's the central role in that game.  If I'm the Host, that's my job: I'm the guy who's throwing the party.  But my job, as Host, is simply to make sure that I do what I can to ensure that the party goes well.  I don't decide what kind of fun people will have, or how, and I certainly didn't decide that John and Martha were going to get it on on the back porch.  But you know, everyone had fun, so that's okay, and I'm the guy who has to do the tidying up afterwards.

But old-fashioned GMing?  Wow.  Prima donna dysfunction waiting to happen.  Take a look at some of those RPG.net "scary DM guy" stories.

[groundhog]

When I was in junior high and high school, I was in a circle of friends whose families mostly had modest incomes. One of my very best friends, however, comes from a family of some wealth. He was originally our GM for AD&D and other games for a few very simple reasons.

The GM had to be very familiar with the books. To be familiar with the books meant to have possession of the books. My friend could afford the books while most of us could not. His parents were wary to let him lend the books out for extended periods. My friend was most familiar with the most source material, and became GM by default.

The GM had to have a place to run the game in mind. My friend's house was larger (and better insulated for sound) than most others. My friend's parents were more permissive about having people over. Again, same friend, again GM by default.

As we got older and my friend and I grew closer, things changed somewhat.  Most of us started earning some amount of our own money. We became more considerate, so we were allowed to play in each other's homes more often. We got cars and driving priveleges, so we could plan things more easily without bothering our parents. With these new freedoms, we all bought a few books for different systems. Most of us wrote a few (or a few dozen) of our own systems. All of us did some world building and background type work.  My friend's parents trusted me (at least as much as they did him) after knowing me a few years and seeing me grow up, so he lent me many of his books.

We each ran the games we'd ourselves written, at least the first few times.  Each person generally also was the first to read and to run a new system he himself bought. Most of the players preferred to play. My friend who normally GMed wanted to play himself sometimes, so I became the GM for most of those games that he didn't run. We'd take rotations on some games or in certain campaigns of others. Other games were strictly his to run or strictly mine, as we each found some games more fulfilling as either GM or player (or one or the other of us simply didn't care enough to learn about particular games to GM them).

I met different friends who were also into RPGs later in life. I found that some people just prefer to always be players and never GM.

That being said, I like to GM because I get tired of playing in groups who are always getting a Monty Haul or who are always getting swatted like flies by big nasty NPCs who have little business being interested in four first-level half-elven rangers or five no-name, no street-cred runners or three 100-point recently unemployed biotech researchers who haven't made up their minds to do anything more than start up a new firm.
I like to GM for players who are tired of these things too.

I like to GM because it gives me a chance to look into the players a little as I watch them play their characters. I'm not a psychologist, but I like to people-watch and I like to think about what other people are thinking and why.

I like to GM because I get tired of playing with three to six other living, breathing people and having my character forced into fewer choices per session than Link or a descendent of Erdrick.  I like to GM for people tired of that, too.

I like to GM because I don't always want to play Rifts, Rifts, and more Rifts. There's a CoC group around here, some miniatures groups, and plenty of LARPers, but when I want to play a non-miniatures tabletop other than Rifts or Call of Cthulu, I usually have to be the GM. My games may not be better, but at least it's not the same game with the same problems year after year.  I have more than one game I like, and I come with my own very different problems!  I like variety, and I'm quite certain at least some other people do too.

I like to GM because I like to get people to playtest my latest crazy rules tweak to whatever system. I like to get them to try my newest, funkiest, craziest system from scratch once in a while, too. Or maybe my new setting and backstory for one or two sessions while on hiatus from another game, a one-shot with no commitment. Most people will try these with someone they've already played with. It's harder to find people at the local games shop who want to do these things right off.

I like to GM because I like to influence the style of play. If part of the group is in a hack'n'slash mood while the others are in a discreet diplomacy mood, I like to try to give each side a little of what they want. I don't care for an all hack-n-slash RPG (that's what FPS games are for) nor do I want to hear whining about using guns instead of butter every time a shot rings out. Some players are all one or the other, but most I have played with just want their shooting/talking/stealing/magic/whatever fix in part of the session and they are happy. Many players are in HnS mode after a bad day, but are more balanced and play their characters more subtly most of the time. It's good to throw a couple big bads the way of the HnS guy when noone will ever find the bodies. It's also good to give the indication that the PCs are outgunned and need to use their mouths  instead of their weapons once in a while. I find the group holds together better if the GM takes such things into account, no matter how the session was intended to go before it began.

I like to GM because my wife is understanding about the hobby, so I can set up at my house, have my references already here, have the group come over, and be able to kick them out when my wife and I are tired. I like RPGs, but don't keep me in a session from 7pm to 3am on a work night. Feel free to kill my character if I leave that session at midnight and it's a problem -- I'd rather create a new character every week or two than have my wife and my boss mad at me when I roll into bed two hours before the alarm goes off and get nothing done once I get to work.

I like to GM because some players think I'm good at it. Some don't, but they can find a game with another GM, run the game themselves, or learn to deal with my shortcomings. I try to get better as time passes, and noone forces anyone to play in my group. For the most part, people who stay in a game I'm GMing like my style. A few have stuck around a while in groups because they had no alternatives, and as long as they weren't disrupting the group that was fine.

I like to GM because I like riddles, I like mystery, I like hiding Easter eggs, I like puzzles, I like talking in different character voices, I like playing the villian, I like playing the overlooked sidekick the valiant adventurer picks up in the second scene, and I like playing the comic relief. The players play one or sometimes two characters. As the GM, I get to play the rest of the people, and not just in speaking parts. I also get to be the architect, the city planner, the crazy mage who wrote a spellbook full of joke spells, the poet and bard, the journalist, the copywriter, the radio DJ, the referance librarian, the blacksmith who decides what kinds of things to keep in stock and what has to be ordered custom, the gardener who decided how to cut the hedges in front of the estate, the school administrator who decides to teach that magic is evil -- in a land with magic granted by a benevolent diety, and any other imagined person who not only appears but who helped shape the imaginary space before the player characters got there. When I've had time before a session, I draw, write, and sometimes even sculpt what the PCs might run across.  If I don't use it because the players went a different route, I recycle it for use later in a different context. It's great fun when a player asks what's inside a book to hand him a notebook with three short stories in it (better if they are all written in a special quirky dialect the locals use). It's likewise great to have a drawing of the facade of a building the PCs will be seeing repeatedly. The players really get into the setting quickly when certain items are made more memorable. There's no need to go overboard, of course. A little extra time spent in worldbuilding and townbuilding makes a long-term campaign easier to run, IMHO. The players get a feel for what their characters might feel tied to, and are less likley to randomly decide to have the PCs move to the other end of the continent and become brigands. I GM partly because I enjoy these little works of background art and detail. I'd play more if other GMs did as much of it.

I guess I GM mainly because playing gives so many options, but GMing gives so many more. I'm not just talking about in the game session, and mostly not about that. A good player can exercise as many options as a good GM in a session (not so true for players under some bad GMs).  The GM has more options in the session time, the play place, the setting, et cetera. Maybe it is about control, but I don't think of it that way. The players want someone else to take care of these details. The GM generally takes care of them.

I'm sure some of you have seen the home design shows in which a designer asks what has to stay, what has to go, and what's negotiable. They then take all these apparently random pieces, put them in a room in which you don't think they belong, and then the room comes together in the end. I like to think of being the GM as doing that. The players vote on a rules systems, premise, and general setting. They make characters that are thrown in the middle of that. I am there, as GM, to make NPCs, background story, little memorable details, decisions of color and size, and decisions of balance. That's it. It's their room. I'm just helping them breathe a little life into it.

[Rob Carriere]

The first point is something I wonder how often occurs in general- that the person who is quick to grasp rules ends up being the helmsman and GM by default?

I've seen it happen a lot, but it's by no means necessary, even in very "classical" games. I've just finished running the Coin trilogy (D&D3.0, linear quest to save the world) under "by the book" constraints (we were on a nostalgia trip). Thing is, the GMing ended up in my lap because of time and energy available constraints, but I'm probably the player at the table who is least knowledgable about D&D3.0. So, I basically ran it using the most knowledgable player as a rules oracle and that worked fine even in a system and an adventure module that strongly assume the classical GM/character player distribution of duties.

SR
--

[Sean]

Groundhog - great first post! Welcome to the Forge.

Chris, what do you mean by 'old-fashioned GMing'? (Maybe this is a subject for another thread.) In my mind the phrase connotes the guy who sets up a play environment and lets the players explore it as they see fit, with no railroading, some guiding, a liberal hand with information and plot hooks for players to pursue or otherwise, and a strong emphasis on providing fair challenges and rewards - the style of many mid-seventies D&D players. I think a lot of people think of railroading and 'impossible thing before breakfast' type games as 'old fashioned', and I agree that that setup is more likely to be dysfunctional for more groups, but in fact this is a late development in the history of RPGing, only becoming commonly endorsed and accepted in the early eighties, and not by everyone even then. The first style I don't think has to be dysfunctional at all - it works for lots of groups, though the GM has to master some non-obvious but not too hard techniques to make it fly.

Well, anyway, enough grousing - if there's material there that's worth pursuing maybe we should take it to another thread. It's interesting how much overlap we're seeing between the posts here - does anyone have reasons that they GM that they think are really radically different from everything we've seen so far?