GM roles

I was recently thinking about the role of the GM in RPGs.  Or referee, or Dungeon Master, or what ever you want to call it.

The 'recieved' version of this for many of us who have been playing a long time is one where the GM is "strong" - that is, the ideal is that the GM is in nearly complete control of what the situation is, and while a good GM can roll with the punches and adjust to what the players do (or what the dice say) generally speaking, they're in a very powerful position.  World creator, rules authority, action determiner, etc.

This probably needs to be examined.  Over at The Sandbox of Doom my dear friend Victor (who was an early GM of mine) ponders this, and wonders what the role of the GM is, contrasting it to the opinion that he recently heard that the game is "all about the players" and finding himself put off by this idea.

There are a lot of different ways to structure this.  There are, for example, systems that encourage a lot of player participation in world creation.  There are those that take this to the limit, with the setting and scenario being a really cooperative effort, using some sort of "pass the stick" narration, or those that involve no central GM, but rather have different people GM'ing different players, each person acting as both player and GM.

None of these, I think, is any better or worse than any other one, although individual preference does play a big role.  Personally, I find that I prefer at least a pre-established framework to hang my stories on, some base setting to work with.  This makes sense for me, because I'm more about the details, and less about the big picture.  But, I really do enjoy playing in games where what I do as a player matters, and matters a lot, and has an effect on other players too.

An awful lot of it actually has to do with the people involved, and less with the specific rules or setting used.  If I trust the GM, and the other players, I'm much more willing to be led down a path not of my own making.  That trust comes from long association, and knowledge of what I can expect.  It's hard to develop, and easy to wreck.  But when it works, it really, really works.

My big question right now could be stated as "how much do you want to know about what's going to happen?"  Traditional GM roles have the GM often coming up with surprises, or hidden information that the characters have to cope with.  This is something that comes out of the strong GM role, and can be very good when done well.  But it's very, very hard to do.

So, I've been thinking a lot about disclosure, the idea that it might be OK if I actually reveal a lot about what's going on, or where I think things are going to the players outside of the game.  The risk is that it's not a surprise anymore.  The benefit might be that the players can adapt and contribute a lot to how it goes, leading to good RP and great emotional satisfaction.  I think that in the past this has mostly been done with setting, sort of creating a third entity that has a say in the proceedings.

For example, in Call of Cthulu, one goes into the game knowing that it's pretty much assured that the characters will end up insane.  Since everyone knows that this is the eventual ending of the story, the joy comes from the particulars of how you get there.

But what if, as a player, I told you (as a GM) that I expected the love triangle that your character is  involved in to end up with at least one of the characters being killed, or killing themselves.  If you agreed, we could go down that route, putting our work into making that a satisfying sort of story to tell.    While for some, it might wreck things to know what's going to happen, for others, it might be a really good way to set the stage, and then focus on the details and the drama that the situation naturally produces. I am thinking of the opening lines of Romeo and Juliet:

Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whole misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents' strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,
And the continuance of their parents' rage,
Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

What do you think?  Does knowing how the story ends make it less satisfying to be a part of?