Game Master: Major Domo

When I write an adventure, I use an MT-like nugget format. But I maintain a
web of loose connections between the nuggets. This allows the plot to unfold
as driven by the player's choices. Some nuggets never get seen. Others get
seen in an unexpected order. But the players are the driving force.

I've been GMing regularly (1-6 times a month) since about 1983 (I got into
RPing in 1981). Over those many hours of gaming and many campaigns, I've
probably played with about 40 or 50 players. My D&D campaign has seen up
towards 30 players and over 40 characters as it enters its 19th year.
Traveller, I've run in several multi-year stints (and some shorter ones)
over that same period, along with a few fits and starts at other games.

The lesson I've learned from willful, intelligent, imaginative,
knowledgeable and funny players over the years is this: The DM hasn't got a
story to tell. If he did, he'd be writing a novel and we'd call him an
author. The *group* has a story to tell. The players can't get the job done
by themselves and neither can the DM. Many times even good DMs lose track of
this for some period of time. Players don't like railroads, they like to
feel they control the destiny of their characters and their choices and
directions. They are not fond of being forced down a path that satisfies
some pre-construed notion of where a game is going that the DM has in mind
since he has a 'plot' to advance.

Especially as I and many of my players age (although we still have some new
blood in the early twenties to liven things up), the game becomes more about
telling a story and about character and the subtleties of interaction rather
than the coarseness of combat and dice rolling. There is still that element,
but there is far more depth behind it than two decades ago.

So how would I state the job of Moderator or Major Domo?

- To develop NPCs and run them, true to their motivations and limitations
(including having imperfect knowledge, blind spots, and making mistakes just
like the PCs do)

- To develop situations with those NPCs into which the PCs can choose to
inject themselves (or where, occasionally, the GM can inject them)

- To apply the rules of the game and a good sense of balance to adjudicating
the interaction of the players, the NPCs and their environment

- Always remember, with great power comes great and commensurate
responsibility

- Always remember that your players are a requirement for your world to have
life

- they are the only ones who give it that life and take it fro being a
stale collection of stats on a page to being a living, breathing interactive
experience (the less you think of it as 'my world' and the more you think of
it as 'our world', the better off you are)

- Expect and depend on the players to go outside your pre-imagined
directions (mine do it daily...). Plan for that in general senses. This is
one of the reasons I don't overdevelop one particular plotline or encounter
or location. If i do, the buggers will probably find a reason not to go
there or to blow the place up. Make loose plans, outlines of how you want to
run an NPC in play or how a location should generally look and feel and then
learn how to fill in detail as you go. Get good at this and your players
won't know that every nook and cranny wasn't carefully planned out, even
when they abandoned your original storyline mid-path and went off after a
side quest as if it was all that mattered.

Thomas B, TML