Lunchtime Poll #29: Us and Them
I’m nicking this week’s Lunchtime Poll from a comment on a discussion on the 20′ x 20′ room. The commenter states:
But your group is not all female, Mike. You’re the GM. Not that the dynamic isn’t interesting and your comments aren’t valid - it just struck me as odd that you’d refer to this game and others you’ve run as “all female” and not “mixed.”
As interesting as the gender aspect of the discussion is, what caught my attention was Mike’s implication that the GM isn’t part of the group. So this week’s question is:
Do you consider the GM part of the group, and why or why not?
Personally, I can’t imagine a GM not being part of the group, but my group has a lot of history together as friends in and out of gaming. Furthermore, there’s more than one person in the group who GMs. For years and years, either Rob or Doug ran our regularly-scheduled games, and I’d occasionally run a short-term humor campaign. All three of us were players in each others’ games; it wasn’t uncommon for Rob and Doug to have simultaneous every-other-week campaigns on complementary schedules. When Rob moved to another city, I found myself stepping into his spot as a full-time GM (much to my surprise). I refer to our delightful band of misfits and nutjobs players as “my group,” but that is no more than a convenient shorthand, because I haven’t ever felt that I’m not part of the group, or even that I’m “in charge.” More often than not, I’m fairly certain that the inmates are running the asylum, and I’m just helping them along.
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June 9th, 2005 at 9:12 am
It seems to me that the GM is integral to the group. How not? A good game is by definition an interaction between GM and players, with the actions of each determining the actions and responses of the others. Certainly the GM gives the story its basic shape, but it is the players, and their characters, that fill in the colour and depth.
June 9th, 2005 at 9:58 am
I think a lot of it also depends on the GM style. GM’s are always part of “the group” on a social level - that goes without question in my mind. The question becomes, it the GM part of “the group” when you’re talking about the character interactions. I think that depends a bit more on the GM style - if the GM plays lots of NPCs and lets the NPCs get into arguments with the party or instigate trouble or what have you, then the GM tends to fit into the group both as a player and as a storyteller. If the GM is more about tossing monsters and obstatcles in the party’s path in the hand of god style, then I probably wouldn’t consider the GM part of the group of players as much.
I guess in my mind the GM is part of the gaming group, but not part of the player group for that particular game, so it depends on which group you’re talking about at any given time.
June 10th, 2005 at 11:19 am
Lunchtime Poll 29: Us and Them
This week, Li asks whether the GM is part of the group and why or why not. From a social…
June 10th, 2005 at 11:21 am
Hm, funny that there are no other trackbacks. I know at least two other blogs have answered this and I don’t see trackbacks from them.
June 10th, 2005 at 12:04 pm
I noticed, and yet trackbacks between my site and this worked fine a few weeks ago. Puzzled.
June 17th, 2005 at 11:14 am
Lunchtime Poll #29: Us and Them
I do consider the GM part of the group, though Julie’s comment about the style of the game does seem to apply. On the one hand, Dad’s definately a member of the group– socially, he’s as much a hub as any other person– but he’s not facing the sam…
May 22nd, 2006 at 12:32 pm
Lunchtime Poll 29 :: not one of us?…
per a discussion on 20×20, Lunchtime Poll 29 asks: Us or Them? Do you consider the GM part of the group, and why or why not? I really should have this answered by……