001 - Entirely the wrong question.

[00:05] Millie (Host):
To start the really half assed planning for this broadcast, I threw up a Instagram poll on my stories. Like, it was really simple, really quick. But to be honest, it served that really basic need that insists inside all radio hosts, which is the desire to know that people are paying attention to you. If I was on a radio station, a big radio station, they'd invest loads of cash into this because they'd wanna know who the hosts are talking to because it helps you sell adverts, like this is a complete passion project so I don't wanna sell adverts but I do still have that ego and want to know that the broadcast I'm planning would reach the right ears and so I invested about thirty seconds into the poll. And, you know, if the poll gave me unexpected results, I could pivot the sort of half assed planned content and make something that appealed to the 50 odd people who voted in my extremely scientific twenty four hour Instagram poll.

[01:03] Millie (Host):
And as the results started coming in, I realized I'd asked completely the wrong question.

[01:13] Philip (Caller 1):
Hi. I'm Philip from Germany. And to your question, am I a GM who plays or a player who GMs? I am more like a player who GMs because in our group, we've got quite a few GMs, and I enjoy playing with them a lot. And I only tried once to GM The Expanse role-playing game.

[01:40] Philip (Caller 1):
I liked it a lot, but it was my first time. So I did a lot of mistakes,

[01:45] Philip (Caller 1):
and

[01:45] Philip (Caller 1):
but I learned from it. And I hope at some point that the others let me GM again because I did put a lot of effort in my second attempt in GMing.

[02:00] Millie (Host):
Thank you for your call, Philip. It's great to have a first caller and it's great to hear that you started to GM and I hope that you get to run another game behind the screen soon. Philip helpfully described himself as a player who GMs because that was one of the choices in my poll. The question I asked was basically, are you a forever GM, an eternal player, mostly a GM who sometimes plays or mostly a player who sometimes GMs. Honestly, I thought the first two options would get the most results.

[02:36] Millie (Host):
That's the sort of narrative that comes from glancing through Facebook and Discord posts. There never seems to be enough GMs and the ones that are around are all burnt out from continually just running table after table. But the interesting thing about the answers was that nobody, at least for the first twelve hours or so, had picked either absolute. Everybody responded crossed that divide to some extent. Except what divide?

[03:06] Millie (Host):
Because the GM is a player? And once the results started coming in, was a little ashamed to realize this is something I say to folks quite often, especially when they're moaning about wayward players. And even the rules say it. Dungeons & Dragons describes one player taking on the role of the dungeon master. Pathfinder does the same thing.

[03:27] Millie (Host):
One of the players serves as the group's GM. Daggerheart says you have three to six players, two to five player characters and one player is the GM. My personal favorite sort of description for this comes from ALIEN, the ALIEN RPG, which describes everybody as playing a character and then one gets to be the Game Mother and calls them the final player, which is wonderful theming because most of the alien games I played in, the Game Mother, the GM is the only one who will have any functioning character at the end of it. So I apparently asked, are you a GM or are you a player? And historical Millie and the rule books are going, yes.

[04:12] Millie (Host):
Yes. I am.

[04:15] Dennis (Caller 2):
Hi, Millie. On the topic of where I sit between GM and player, I think I'm very much a GM, a storytelling GM. And if I do do get to play, I do still bring that storytelling element with me. I do bring a character that has a little bit of a story and we'll just relentlessly ask the GM for the story of their world, catch me forever making Arcana and History checks to find out every bit of story that I possibly can.

[04:57] Millie (Host):
Thank you very much for your call, Dennis. I really like this one because of the way he describes himself as very much a GM and particularly a storytelling GM. But when he moves from that into the other role, that storytelling doesn't disappear. He creates characters with stories and then confesses to pestering a poor GM about everything because he wants to know about the world. So Dennis changes seats, but he doesn't necessarily become a different kind of participant.

[05:25] Millie (Host):
And that's what I bumped into here, like the community shorthand, our jargon, our lexicon of like players and GMs and it somehow created a taller GM screen than the rules originally implied. And there's a physical version of that divide too. What do we do to the person running a game? We sit everybody around the table and then we put a little cardboard wall in front of them. Over here is the players and on the other side is the GM.

[05:58] Millie (Host):
Now obviously I know why folks use GM screens, why they exist. There are notes back there, maps, secrets, stat blocks, things that other players aren't supposed to see. Sometimes there's dice rolls that apparently folks aren't supposed to pay attention to. GM screens are useful. The rule book says one of you is gonna take on the role of the Game Master, but the furniture says yes, put that one over there.

[06:25] Millie (Host):
And as a little English language nerd, I think it kind of becomes interesting when you start looking at what else we say about these two groups. Because the word players ended up doing two jobs. Officially it means everybody playing the game. But also it means everybody playing the game except the GM. And those two meanings put the GM in subtly different places.

[06:50] Millie (Host):
And I wonder if that distinction matters more than we realize.

[06:57] Mira (Caller 3):
Hi, Millie. It's Mira. Sometimes DM, mostly player. I like to sit in the middle. I think that's what the question was.

[07:09] Mira (Caller 3):
I like to sit in the middle so I can hear everybody clamoring around me and I can be near all the snacks. Yeah. Also, I like to be in the place where most people can see me when I'm showing off being a big old bard. Anyway, what a lovely question. Have a great radio show.

[07:31] Mira (Caller 3):
Bye, Millie.

[07:34] Millie (Host):
Thank you for your call, Mira. I particularly enjoy it because you've solved the GM versus player divide mostly by sitting in the middle near the snacks, which might actually be the most sensible contribution to this entire discussion. Maybe I'm just getting wound up about semantics like GM and player and we know what those words mean in context. Nobody's been harmed by some slightly wonky terminology. It's a little like the Nat 20s outside of combat.

[08:06] Millie (Host):
Like by the rules, by the D&D rules, like the barbarian critting on a lore roll doesn't mean jack. They still have to do the maths and they still have to get a number versus a DC. But isn't it fun to have that 5% chance that something ridiculous can happen? That's often where the stories that survive beyond the table, that's where they come from, those moments. And nobody sent me a DM that says, Millie, your poll is not rules as written.

[08:33] Millie (Host):
We modify our RPGs all the time because it makes them work better for us. So perhaps this is like one of those collective house rules. The rule book says there are players and one of those players takes on the role of the GM. And somewhere along the way, we've sort of house ruled the language into there are players and there are GMs. You know, fine.

[08:59] Millie (Host):
It's like useful shorthand. Everybody understands it. Nobody needs me turning up at your table with a little red pen going every time you say the players. But I am aware that, like, house rules have consequences. Sometimes you change one rule and discover three sessions later why it was connected to something else.

[09:24] Millie (Host):
And is this one of those moments? Because listen to the way we talk about those two roles. Somebody says, I'm finally getting to play this weekend, and what they mean is they're not GMing. We talk about GMs running games for their players. GMs prepare the game.

[09:44] Millie (Host):
GMs facilitate the game. Most GMs organize the game, adjudicate the game, provide the world, the encounters, the NPCs, and the players just play it? And I think that's a really odd distinction if the GM is supposed to be playing too. Because the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the two seats aren't just different in what you actually do. They can be different in what we think you're there for.

[10:16] Millie (Host):
The player is there to experience the game. The GM can start to sound like they're there to provide that experience, and I don't think that's what the rules actually say. Like the GM has responsibilities the other players don't have. Somebody has to know what's behind the door. Somebody has to decide whether Gary's incredibly persuasive argument has convinced the Goblin King.

[10:45] Millie (Host):
Somebody has to know why there are 17 suspiciously well armed guards in the next room. But the responsibility isn't the same thing as being outside the game. The GM is still supposed to be experiencing it too. They don't know everything that's gonna happen. They can't because there's a table full of other people also making decisions and they get to react and they get to make choices.

[11:11] Millie (Host):
They're discovering things about the characters, they're surprised when someone comes up with something They've never anticipated. They're playing. The GM is playing.

[11:26] Ava (Caller 4):
Hi. I'm Ava Foxfort, and I mostly DM, but do play. I get a good few opportunities to play. I thought it was gonna be forever GM, like, even from, like, childhood. I attempted to run a game for my brother that went catastrophically wrong, and I ended up crying. I was young.

[11:52] Ava (Caller 4):
But, yeah, I played a few things as a teenager, and then when I got back into role playing, I ended up DMing more because I had that enthusiasm and really wanted to play things. But I think I've been really lucky. I go to a con every year where I get to play in lots of games with some, like, absolutely brilliant GMs. And I get to play in some of my friends' games every now and then. I kind of prefer GMing.

[12:36] Ava (Caller 4):
No. I really love playing because I can just focus. Right? Having people in the palm of your hands just feels wonderful.

[12:58] Millie (Host):
Thank you for your call, Ava. I like that Ava isn't describing one role where she gets to play, and then another where she facilitates for everybody else's play. She's describing two different kinds of fun that she gets from taking part in an RPG session. Maybe a GM and a player aren't two different kinds of people at the table. They're roles, like the rules said all along.

[13:24] Millie (Host):
In my hastily ego-driven poll, I asked the wrong question and I learnt why radio stations spend so much money on their surveys. Are you mostly a GM, mostly a player, always one, always the other? That wasn't what I wanted to know and didn't drive the poor forever GM narrative that I assumed it would. The more I thought about it and the more I've listened to actual calls, the less interested I am in which side of the screen someone feels they belong to. And the right question, the kind of question that will generate more conversation and also be the sort of question I wanna feature on Games Master FM.

[14:08] Millie (Host):
How do you like to play? I'm Millie. I'm mostly GM because I want to know all the Game Master FM accepts no responsibility for character death, scheduling complex, rules lawyering, fail perception checks, anything that happens after somebody says, what a great idea. You can find the show and send your own incoming transmissions at gamesmaster.fm.