GM, DM, referee, storyteller, storyguide, etc., etc.

[xiombarg]

I nearly stove my head in trying to think of alternative names for the non-GM players in PTA, especially as the "GM" role has less specific areas of control. I went with Producer for "that guy's" job, but the rest of the players are actors and camera crew and screenwriter and director and key grip all rolled into one. Not really a handy term for that lying around.

I think we're shifting off-topic, but for the "all rolled into one" term: "Crew"? "Staff"?  Or what about "People" as in "I'll have my People talk to your People."

[M. J. Young]

Jack, you said that referee seemed too limited in its description of the role. I understand that objection. We used referee in Multiverser because we felt it was the best term for the job in terms of accessibility to everyone: people who know nothing of role playing understand that games sometimes have one person who is the referee, whose functions in the game are different from those of the players. Perhaps part of that is reaction to those silly anti-D&D statements about how players are trying to work their way up to being Dungeon Masters (it's incredible how opinionated uninformed people can be), so we wanted something that would be clear. Obviously, basketball players are not in the main trying to work their way up to one day become basketball referees.

We also felt that the ideas of neutral arbiter and facilitator of the game were carried in the term, which did, in our view, cover the scope of what we wanted. That may be odd, since Multiverser probably requires more creative efforts from its referees than most games, but we just saw that as facilitating play.

I think the term you choose matters in a number of ways; but you have to give a lot of thought to whether you want to step outside the familiar. First, if you do call it something else, unless there's an inherently good reason for that, people will ignore it. In my groups, I had something of an advantage: we didn't have a generic name. I don't believe either Metamorphosis Alpha, Star Frontiers, or Gamma World (the games we picked up after D&D in the early days) had any special names for the referee, and we wound up calling Bob "Mutant Master" and Jan "Space Queen", but always as a bit of a joke about the title "Dungeon Master" which fell to me. Thus my gaming group didn't really have "GM" in common use, and naturally fell to "referee" when it was suggested. Even in D&D, we usually refer to the DM as the referee now, because it's a word that already contains the necessary meaning, and not some term we have to use that no one outside the hobby would understand.

If you're going to use a particular uncommon title, you need to have it mean something that differentiates it from the similar role in other games. Storyteller, as bad as it is, caught on because

[*]it had meaning already and[*]the meaning fit with the intended notion of facilitating story creation.[/list:u]I won't argue whether the game succeeded in doing that; the players adopted the name as a way of creating that sort of expectation. If you can make the title fit the image of the game somehow, in a meaningful way that expresses how the job or the game differs from others, it will work. Otherwise, the players will just call that guy what they've always called him, sometimes with an, "Oh yeah, the (insert meaningless title here)" tagged on.

--M. J. Young

[Sylus Thane]

I just use g.o.d. for Game Operations Director. It always just seemed to fit just right in describing all the work a person running game has to do. As far as players go I always just found out who was playing and then just call them my Friends.

[Andrew Martin]

I seem to recall the subject being phrased as a question.
What you you call the fifth wall? or something like that.

Fifth Business.

[Levi Kornelsen]

Organizer, which someone mentioned as growing on them, is used fairly often in Live-Action circles here in Edmonton, especially once one steps outside of the White Wolf games line.

It seems to fit quite well, though I do enjoy Castle Falkenstein's "Host" as a neat title as well.

For tabletop, I have seen Guide used, which was mentioned, as well as Director, in at least one movie-themed system.

For the original poster, if you would change titles, I'd go with Guide.

[Edit- for the Original poster in the Alternative Names for "Game Master" thread.   Sorry, jumped a thread-to thread link there.]