On Design; or, "Are Game Masters Game Designers?"
A rambling on the nature of GMs and the interactions between rules and design
As of writing this, a discourse happening over on Twitter is whether Game Masters (GMs) fit under the “game designer” umbrella. The discourse, as it always does, has turned into a mess. This did, however, lead me down a rabbit hole of thought that has pulled in my law degree, ideas about the nature of rules, and how “game design” is a poorly defined term.
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What is game design, anyways?
In order to answer the question “is a GM a game designer?”, we need to know what a game design actually is. Now, this is a loaded question, and honestly probably where most of the debate is actually happening; game design is a broad umbrella term that gets used to cover a lot of different aspects. Is level design game design? Encounter design? Narrative design? My friend Sarah, when talking to her about this, said those things should be considered “game design,” and generally I agree, but I think we get a more interesting answer if we narrow our definition.
When I think of game design, broadly speaking, I think of the creation the rules, systems, and mechanics of a game. It’s the bounds for which play is meant to take place inside of. If you are not meant to do something, then the design will have developed the rules and mechanics in a way to prevent you from doing it, and vice versa.
Something that separates TTRPGs from some other forms of games is that, while in a board game or a video game, you can account for and heavily restrict the experience; if the player in a video game is not supposed to enter a specific building, you can code the game to reject all possible attempts to do so. TTRPGs, however, are far more freeform; it is much harder to restrict the actions of a player who has the full range of creativity and opportunity their mind can allow. As such, this creates some unpredictability in how the design interacts with play; try as you might, your rules may not cover every situation, or if they do, it is not clear how to exactly implement them. Keep this in mind as we go forward.
So, how does the GM fit into this?
The assumptions of TTRPGs, at their core, is that the players will play the game with the rules as they are written; at their core, the base assumption for the person writing the original game rules is that a group of players will open the box, open the book, start at page 1, and play the rules in the book. Is this realistic? Probably not, but that’s the assumption we’re going to make for this discussion; at least some groups will do this, so we’ll use it as our baseline.
The GM is just a player of the game by default. They have a different role in the process of play, but by GMing they are still participating in the act of playing the game. Assuming a game is designed to have rules of what the GM should be doing or interacting with the other players, if they follow those rules, then they are not doing any sort of game design.
Some of you may ask, “don’t GMs participate in game design whenever they make a homebrew rule?” Yes! But to me, that is very clearly game design, and people wouldn’t be having this debate if this was all that’s at stake.
Well, then, they’re not! They’re just another player subject to the rules, case closed!
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Often, the GM is presumed to be the “rules master,” as they are not only guiding the story, but guiding play as a whole. Regardless of what you think of this assumption,1 this is the wider cultural conception of the role of the GM. Thus, when ambiguity arises due to the aforementioned unpredictability, people turn to the GM to adjudicate; does a particular rule apply to the situation at hand? How should play proceed?
Thus, when people are asking the question “is the GM a game designer?”, an underlying question to be answered is “is rules adjudication the same as game design?” For me, the answer to this question is yes.
When a GM makes a ruling about whether a particular rule applies to a situation, if there is no better rule that should be applied, then they are establishing that that action correlates with that rule. If there is otherwise no clarification within the text of the rules, then under our model of GM as rules interpreter, they are left to fill in the gaps; in essence, they become a judge interpreting law. Let’s talk legal theory.
Legal theory? But this is game design!
Stick with me here. In the U.S. and the U.K.2, a major part of the legal structure is the “common law,” or the law that is not necessarily written down in statute or regulation but is promulgated by the legal tradition itself. Some situations do not line up neatly with the law as written, and it is in these situations that judges can provide some insight and interpretation into the meaning of the law.3 For example, a common place that boggles the minds of many a first year law student is contract law. Under the common law, there is very little required to create a legally binding contract; did you know that an agreed upon price is not required in the sale of goods?
These laws are created and enforced purely within the legal tradition, and usually only become superseded if the interpretation of the law is contrary to the legislative intent of the statute, in which case the legislature will change the statute to be less vague. Different judges in different jurisdictions can come to different interpretations of the law, and thus while two things may be similar across two different locations, these interpretations become two separate laws.
As such, if we apply this idea of the “common law” to GM rules adjudication, then we can see that the GM is, in essence, creating new rules; therefore, by extension, they are engaging in the practice of game design! Through this interpretive act, they are saying that, in this “jurisdiction” (the GMs table), this particular rule applies to this particular situation; another reasonable GM may interpret the rules differently, but it may still be a valid interpretation of said rules, and as such become a part of the rules while playing with that GM.
Closing thoughts
Honestly, the title of this post is clickbait. I don’t have a deep interest in answering this question, because the Twitter discourse is actually about something else that probably would need it’s own essay. I’m more interested in the ideas that sprung up by thinking about the question for too long, and working through the logic down into a way to really get at “what counts as game design.”
Are GMs game designers? Yes, obviously! If you ignore the definition I use, they very obviously are participating in game design. Narrative design, dungeon design, encounter design, all of those are things an average person would call game design. What this analysis shows is at the core of GMing, there is an argument to be mad that they inherently are participating in game design, even if you pull away everything else. Is this a definitive answer to the question? No, I’m not an authority; this is just a single perspective. But from this perspective, I think it’s silly to say they aren’t game designers; they just might not be professional game designers.
I hope that this thought exercise was an interesting read! I hope to do more theory like this in the future; I was just a procrastinating queer on a rainy day, so I spent too much time thinking about this silly question.
What do you think? Are GMs game designers? Let me know on my socials, and be sure to subscribe for more ponderings and ideas from yours truly.
This is a bad assumption; rules should be understood by all players at the table and it shouldn’t fall on a single player all the time.
And probably most places colonized by them, though I can’t say for certain.
Lawyers, judges, and philosophers have dedicated entire careers to answering the question “what is the law?” and whether Common Law is itself a separate body of law, or just an extension of existing laws. This is a blog post about game design, so, we’re not getting too deep into this. I recommend this Philosophy Tube video for some other insights into how this works: “How Police Make Up The Law (ft. LegalEagle)”