History of theGM?

[komradebob]

Kat Miller started a thread (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=14344) asking why someone would choose to be a GM. I can relate to many of the opinions and experiences posted to that thread. However, I'm curious about the historical development of the position of GM as it relates to rpgs, so I'm starting this thread.

I find that the position of GM is a peculiar facet of rpgs, perhaps ( up to a point) even a defining feature of rpgs. Certainly, many rpgs assume such a position inherently exists. What can folks tell me about how this came about?

One of the first ideas that I encountered when visiting the Forge is that a GM is a person to whom GM duties are ascribed.* These duties, in part, have been described elsewhere. The idea that these duties may be distributed differently from traditional rpg design is probably ( to me) one of the most fascinating ideas presented at this site.

I'll contribute the following to the roots of GM conversation:

Going back into the reaches of history**, the GM has its roots in Kriegspiel***. In KS, a referee/trainer set out situations for cadets. The cadets then attempted to deal with said situation as troop commanders, while the referee/trainer used texts based on mathematical calculations to support his rulings on the results. Later, Freispiel developed out of Kreigspiel.**** Freispiel differed from Kriegspiel in that it posited that an experienced  ( on the battlefield) referee/trainer might actually be more qualified to interpret situations than a mathematically based book of formulas.*****

KS/FS influenced the later development of miniatures wargames, particularly Little Wars, by H.G. Wells. Said miniatures wargames, much later, influenced the developments of early rpgs, most obviously, Dungeons and Dragons****** Interestingly, rpgs kept the position of GM, while wargames largely dropped the concept, favoring a more competetive, player versus player model of design.

Okay, that's my bit of history. What can rpg scholars tell me about later developments in the concept of GM? I don't own my old-timey rulebooks anymore, so I can't look for myself.


* This gets into a "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" argument. How can you have GM duties, if there is no such thing as a GM?
** The part that immediately follows this is based on 2nd or  3rd ( or more removed) information. Please treat it with a big grain of salt.
*** Quick recap: Kriegspiel. Kreigspiel was the military excersise method used by german military academies in the mid-late 1800s.
****Kriegspiel translates something like wargame. It could also translate as war-play. Freispiel translates as "Free-game" or Free-Play". Happily, English isn't the only language with ambiguous interpretation of words.
*****This is an interesting difference both relating to questions of the authority of text rules, and the beginnnings of GM Fiat as a resolution method. In my mind, it also brings up " GM as holder of hidden knowledge" ( GM vs. players Gamism) and " GM as enforcer of emulated material" ( Simulationism) duties.
******I don't particularly buy the idea that rpgs are a direct outgrowth of miniature wargames. Rather, I would say the rpgs are an outgrowth of miniatures wargames, combined with a variety of other influences including "cowboys and indians" type childhood games, improv theatre, playing with toys, traditional storytelling, parlor games, and other more esoteric pursuits. I personally find the idea that "rpgs evolved from [miniatures] wargames" to be on par with "modern humans evolved from monkeys"- a terrible and often misleading simplification of the issue.

[ffilz]

Certainly you're right that something more than wargames contributed to RPGs, however, D&D very definitely did evolve directly out of a wargame. Dave Arneson was running a wargame campaign, and providing more and more options for the commanders between "scenarios." Meanwhile, Gary Gygax was introducing fantasy elements to the Chainmail miniatures game that focused on skirmishes. Both of these groups were in contact, and slowly D&D evolved out of them.

I'd also point out that GMed wargaming is still alive and well. Wander the miniatures hall at Origins or GenCon and you will see table after table of GMed miniatures games. Sure, there has been lots of development of non-GMed games, especially with things like Mage Knight and the D&D Miniatures Game (but even those games use referees for tournaments).

Frank

[clehrich]

I see a drastic transformation here.  I'm not the guy to tell you about the history, but somewhere in the D&D growth process you seem to have seen the generation of the GM-as-auteur.  An off-the-cuff impression is that this occurred with the advent of a "story" notion (which was very loose), in which instead of battles with intervals you thought of the game as somehow telling or recounting an epic---with lots of detailed battles.  I wonder whether this was a direct impact upon D&D of the growth of the fantasy genre of Tolkien-imitations, since after all Tolkien became a very big cult deal primarily in the 1960s, not long before D&D, and genre-fantasy grew out of that.  I also have the impression that this had quite a lot to do with E. Gary Gygax personally, but I might very well be wrong about that.

[For Big Model nuts, what I'm looking for here is how you went from very, very developed and expanded Freispiel to The Impossible Thing Before Breakfast, which you note is about "story" and "character" rather than what amounts to the physics (and human dynamics) of combat.]

[Sean]

Hi Chris -

The big turning point here was the Dragonlance modules, which I regard as an abomination straight from the bottom of the 666th plane of the Abyss, though that has to do with my personal preferences in play-style. The groundwork for this 'impossible thing' style of play was already growing out of the response of Nar-inclined players to AD&D, which unlike D&D (though it gave mixed messages on the subject because of holdover assumptions from the old game) was meant to be rather regimented and was less susceptible to functional drift for a variety of reasons.

[Sean]

One more thing on this before I go back to bottle-feeding. There's an unbelievably atavistic 'DM advice' article by Monte Cook in Dungeon 118 where he talks about the 'two styles' of GMing: the impartial arbiter/neutral 'referee' GM and the illusionism + railroading story-oriented 'guide' GM. State of the art for 1981. Anyway, the first style was relatively common fo 70's D&D and early AD&D, and a lot of groups found this functional and fun, especially if you had a GM who learned how to (a) figure out what players were interested in, (b) provide interesting choices, and (c) was able to respond to what people were doing in play rather than having to have everything made up in advance. The second style was relatively common for early eighties D&D, was almost universally hated by the 'old school', and often is not functional and fun for reasons well-appreciated around the Forge, though it can be if everyone knows what they're in for and likes that (I know some groups that do, tho' I can scarcely understand why).

[Jere]

Hi Chris -

The big turning point here was the Dragonlance modules, which I regard as an abomination straight from the bottom of the 666th plane of the Abyss, though that has to do with my personal preferences in play-style. The groundwork for this 'impossible thing' style of play was already growing out of the response of Nar-inclined players to AD&D, which unlike D&D (though it gave mixed messages on the subject because of holdover assumptions from the old game) was meant to be rather regimented and was less susceptible to functional drift for a variety of reasons.

I think it predates Dragonlance. I feel, with no evidence, that Dragonlance was a recognitio of a trend already gong on.

Jere

[Marco]

My personal observation on the evolution of the GM was moving the action "out of the dungeon." I mean, that's how we first thought about it and there were early Dragon articles--although I don't know which ones, exactly.

Now: I realize this is a misnomer. Early modules often had an "out of the dungeon" part (just before the dungeon) or a battle in the forest with hill giants or whatever.

However: the structure of the dungeon (literal walls, PC's as the prime moving agents, usually, etc.) makes it easy to get either a string of battles or a "story" out of it (or both).

For the former you just need the rules. For the latter you need to add some reason for being down there and have the players describe actions (dialog?) in accordance with that reason.

But outside the dungeon you are missing:
(a) Walls.
(b) The PC's are not always the prime movers and the GM has the additional job of controling pacing.

This makes it very hard to get something like a story out of your game if the PC's are not proactive and/or you don't have a situation that makes it easy to pace.

An example of the former is PC's who get into town and immediately "lay low" by pretending to be poor peasants and staying in boring dives and talking to no one. If there is anything interesting going on they won't find it and it won't find them.

An example of the latter is a group of active/pro-active PC's who are trying to solve a mystery and, due to mechanics, run out of clues. If the mystery is formulated in a way such that the interesting agents simply want to stay as far from the investigators as possible, that's what will happen. The game ends or the GM "manipulates things" to get it "back on track."

[ there's a third case where the action in the game simply isn't interesting to the players but everyone is still playing for whatever reason and complaining about it. That rarely happened to us but seems to be common elsewhere. ]

The second evolution in my GM'ing style came when we realized that the assumed player right to make any legal character without reference or pre-knowledge of the game was simply a hold-over from AD&D where "every legal character" was still usually a young adventurer lookin' for treasure and experience.

That *wasn't* the case with, say, Danger International and we had to re-calibrate our GMing and play-style to get the players on the same page with the GM--and the more agreement before hand, the better.

In terms of the "industry as a whole" I can't say for sure--but I see echoes of our own experiences in Vampire, Kult, Call of Cthulhu D20, and elsewhere.

In fact: I think that TRoS's GMing section actually talks about a lot of this directly and in a profitable manner.

-Marco

[Ron Edwards]

Wow! Great thread.

I wanted to address a tiny side-bit from the first post (although I have read and loved the thread so far):

This gets into a "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" argument. How can you have GM duties, if there is no such thing as a GM?

The best way to look at this, I think, is that my term "GM tasks" is indeed an abomination of its own, and merely a place-holder for what I hope will be a better term from completely outside the context of historical trends in our hobby.

Perhaps "organizational" or "cohering" or (uh oh) "management" tasks. Or maybe something totally different, I dunno.

I called them "GM-tasks" only because culturally, all of us here are starting more-or-less from the relatively whacked "the GM" mind-set.*  Now that a lot of us have decided, either through discourse or independently, to lay that aside and rebuild "centralization of GM-tasks" from the ground up as individualized game design plans, rather than first principles, the term is showing its age.

Best,
Ron

* OK, OK, Vincent and Co. didn't start from here. Gold stars for you guys. I'm sayin' this so Vincent and Emily don't chime in with a slew of threads from two or three years ago. Gold stars! Don't sling us the slew!

[Emily Care]

Perhaps "organizational" or "cohering" or (uh oh) "management" tasks. Or maybe something totally different, I dunno.

If we look at every d@mn thing ya do in a role-playing game as some kind of game task or contribution, they break down into two kinds:

creative tasks/contributions which are descriptions, narration, voicing thoughts/words of characters etc. This is all stuff that pops directly into the sis. Actually it is the sis, or what everybody forms their own local sis out of. On Vincent's handy diagram, they are the stuff on the left side of the smiley-faces.

organizational tasks or cues these are everything else ya do. Roll dice, consult game texts, look at tea leaves, you call it.  In Vincent's diagram, they are over on the right hand side and the arrow for them has to go through the little smiley-face people 'cause that's the only way they get to affect the sis. Via human agency.

Anyway, not too elegant, but fits with what Paganini wrote about contributing, which is dead on the money in my book. I'm sure some great catchy phrases will surface eventually that capture all this.

best,
Emily

ps thanks for the stars, Ron. wouldn't dream of mucking up a beautiful thread like this with history.

edited one time to add "contribution" twice.

[John Kim]

The best way to look at this, I think, is that my term "GM tasks" is indeed an abomination of its own, and merely a place-holder for what I hope will be a better term from completely outside the context of historical trends in our hobby.

Perhaps "organizational" or "cohering" or (uh oh) "management" tasks. Or maybe something totally different, I dunno.

I called them "GM-tasks" only because culturally, all of us here are starting more-or-less from the relatively whacked "the GM" mind-set.*  Now that a lot of us have decided, either through discourse or independently, to lay that aside and rebuild "centralization of GM-tasks" from the ground up as individualized game design plans, rather than first principles, the term is showing its age.

Well, I agree that it's an abomination.  :-)  Personally, I started around 3rd grade with an old-school D&D mindset.  In running modules, the early DM was something of a glorified bookkeeper.  Many of the glossary "GM tasks" -- such as Scene Framing -- are things which were absolutely not a part of that.  i.e. I as an early DM most certainly did not have the power to suddenly say "OK, it's two days later and you're in a bar."  So to me, it's strange that these sort of sweeping powers are called "GM tasks" and associated with "old" GM position.  

In terms of history, I see this as something which happened during the 80s.  For 1975 to 1981 or so, modules were generally keyed locations -- this includes Top Secret modules as well as D&D dungeons.  There were some overlaid elements (you see this in later Top Secret modules and D&D modules like the original Ravenloft), but it was constructed so that there was no sequence of scenes.  It was expected that the players could be anywhere at any time -- they wandered about the locations as they saw fit.  There was considerable effort spent in these modules to be non-linear.  

This changed with cinematic games like James Bond 007, Adventures of Indiana Jones, Marvel Superheroes, and Paranoia.  These adopted the idea much more of the GM as a storyguide or director.  

There was much more diversity and experimentation during the mid-eighties.  For the GM tasks, there is notably Ars Magica (1987) and Prince Valiant (1989).  Ars Magica introduced the concept of troupe style play, which never caught on.  It also introduced Whimsy Cards, which gave some external plot control -- unlike the formerly purely mechanical resources (like James Bond's hero points or Ghostbuster's brownie points).  However, neither of these caught on with other games -- althought Ars Magica itself was quite successful.  

By 1990, player-directed wandering pretty much disappeared from published games.  In 2nd edition AD&D modules and in modules for newer games like Torg (1990), there is generally a linear plot.  This remained the standard for a decade until 3rd edition D&D saw a resurgence of old-style dungeon crawls.

[Doctor Xero]

I see a drastic transformation here.  I'm not the guy to tell you about the history, but somewhere in the D&D growth process you seem to have seen the generation of the GM-as-auteur.

I think there's a cultural factor we are seriously failing to take into account when we consider this evolution in the definition of the game master -- the popularization at the time of the auteur theory of film.

(Put simply, the auteur theory focuses on the notion that with some artists a work of storytelling art (film, play, performance art, game) should reflect the unified vision, philosophy and aesthetic touch of one individual.)

Although the auteur theory of film has its origins in 1950s France, it really became part of popular discussion in the U.S. in the late 1970s (for examples, look at discussions of George Lucas and Star Wars written at the time).  The auteur theory of artistry was often conflated with the Great Man/Woman theory of history in popular thought, and people of that time were fascinated with people such as Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Wells and Jack Kirby and Gary Gygax.

I do not think we should assume automatically that it is mere coincidence that the articles chastizing game masters that they owe it to their players to provide a unified vision and aesthetic touch in their games occurred around the same time as the popularized conflation of the auteur theory and the Great Man/Woman theory.  After all, gaming subculture does not develop independently of the larger culture within which it is embedded.

Doctor Xero

(Warning: in the time since the 1980s, some snarky iconoclasts have misrepresented the auteur theory as mere snobbery as part of their politically correct pseudo-populism, so be forewarned that if you look up auteur theory on the web, you are more likely to encounter their one-sided misrepresentations than an intelligent even-handed representation of both the strengths and the flaws of the theory.)

[Sean]

Jere - I agree, and tried to imply that with part of the material you quote. Dragonlance was the big popular expression of it in the D&D world though. But the first time I met people who played that way did predate those modules.

Emily - Isn't there a third kind of task involving organizing and facilitating communication among the smiley faces themselves? A lot of this is 'out of game' in one sense, but it's (a) stuff that's expected of GMs more often than not and (b) sometimes necessary to directly deal with the human reality rather than the SiS or the organizational stuff in the game sense in order to make progress in an RPG.

[Emily Care]

Hi Sean,

Isn't there a third kind of task involving organizing and facilitating communication among the smiley faces themselves? A lot of this is 'out of game' in one sense, but it's (a) stuff that's expected of GMs more often than not and (b) sometimes necessary to directly deal with the human reality rather than the SiS or the organizational stuff in the game sense in order to make progress in an RPG.

Do you mean social wrangling like containing a digression field? Or do you mean things like determining who gets to narrate next?

If it's the former, I wasn't even addressing non-sis affecting phenomena.  These are all just layers of the social happenstance of play.  There's clearly a whole world of non-game-related social tasks that do make it possible to play. Sometimes those are assumed parts of a gm's task set, but they since they are not game related, I'm comfortable with not working hard to get the theory to embrace them.

If it's the latter, try this for size. Any interactions between the smiley-face-people are basically the same as any of the other organizing tasks, they just don't have some external referent, or cue, involved.  That's why I threw in the tea leaves. When you get down to it, it's all just talk between the smiley-face-people.  The fact that the character sheet says my character's name gets in the way of us realizing we're all really just making all this stuff up.

(And this in no way means that having an external referent doesn't help folks do a better job of making stuff up. But that's what it's doing. Helping the people in their creative tasks. )

And if you mean something else, let me know!

yrs,
Emily Care

[Sean]

Hi Emily - thanks.

I meant the first. As to what you say about the second, I agree that those kinds of tasks are part of 'system' in the tea-leaves-and-dice sense, except that sense many games don't offer much help with that part of it, but do establish an authority in the person of the GM, so that it becomes the GM who does a lot of those things (e.g. "What does your character say?" Why her character just then? Sometimes that's a clear consequence of Situation, but by no means always so in many games.)

As to the first...they aren't sis-affecting phenomena in the sense that the others are, sure, I agree. But: they are things a group needs to take care of, and in considering what makes a GM or the history of GMing, I think taking account of apportionment of social duties is important.

For example: often, though not always, it's the GM who decides who is and isn't going to play in their game. There are groups which treat this right as a 'given'. There are people who will defend it: "It's his game, so if he doesn't want to run for x, what's the problem?" And so on.

So I agree that this is social contract stuff and involves different principles of smiley-organization than the others. But it seems like it's going to be hard to discuss ideas like GM as group leader, GM as facilitator of play, GM as organizer, all of which have been parts of the idea of GM for a lot of people, without them. That said, if I were giving a theory of what a GM contributes to an SIS in different sorts of arrangement, and when rearrangements 'eliminate the GM' versus when they just redefine her role, etc., I would want to focus in on the same parts you do.

----------

So anyway. With respect to the thread topic I guess I've come to think the following. The two classic stereotypes that have come up in this thread do describe wide swathes of gaming during certain historical periods, though far from exhaustively so. But not all: my group had gone totally Narrativist by the time the Dragonlance modules came out, but we still hated them, because what we did was we took the interesting characters in the old open-ended-setting style modules, formed attachments, created emotional and moral conflicts, and that sort of thing, which we had developed techniques (mostly freeform, really, but we knew how to get the kind of stories we wanted) to do. But you couldn't do this on the railroad. We got better Narrativist play out of Vault of the Drow than out of any of those crappy 'story' modules.

So I think if you want to go beyond that a better bet is to look at magazine articles (Alarums and Excursions is most important here, as is some stuff in Dragon and the Judges Guild Journal & Pegasus) and the GMing advice in a whole wide variety of games (as Ron uses so fruitfully in his essays). That's going to give you more of a sense of the variety of approaches to different problems that were in the air at different times, I think. Other than the two classic stereotypes, which are non-monolithic, I'm not sure there's much more to be said about a 'general history of GMing' beyond the (very interesting, keep them coming!) notes people have actually posted. But I'm open to being proven wrong.

[jerry]

With respect to the wargaming/DMing continuum, it is interesting to read what Gygax had to say to wargamers well before D&D hit its stride.

In Dungeon #112, they reprint an article from the May, 1974 Wargames Digest. The discussion is already focusing on stories. The first paragraph is:

Ever since Tolkien's fantasy books attained popularity, there has been a continuing growth of interest in the subject of Swords & Sorcery games.

Then he goes on telling wargamers about how cool Swords & Sorcery wargaming is:

Adventures are of two kinds: underworld expeditions to the labyrinthine dungeons, or perilous treks in the wilderness. The former kind of game is typically the most varied, for it is played on a series of maze maps designed by the campaign referee, each map representing a successively lower level of passages and rooms deep beneath some weird castle.

There is no explanation, though, of why you need a "campaign referee" to design maze maps (why not just use the mazes that come with the game, I'd be thinking).

Then he goes into a "brief dramatic account of one of the more memorable dungeon expeditions" involving Mordenkainen and Bigby.

It's a fascinating look back, if you can find it. I write a little more about the issue (but not the article) here.

Jerry