Gamemasters are Game Designers!
Yes. Tabletop RPG Gamemasters are Players as well. But they are also Game Designers.
What made me to make this blogpost? Pettiness. Someone said that one does not need to learn different games and play styles, unless they are game designers.
Does it bother me? Yeah. Such an ignorant take! I might post about why everyone should try different games and play styles in the future. But right now, I want to focus on GMing = Game Designing.
In Elements of Game Design by Robert Zubek, game design comes down to three elements:
- Mechanics: The game objects and actions that the player interacts with. They can be assembled into systems with specific properties.
- Gameplay: The process of players interacting with game mechanics.
- Player experience: The player’s subjective experience of gameplay.
Let's see how these three elements fit a Gamemaster's role as a Game Designer:
- Mechanics: A GM designs on the fly by curating and modifying mechanics. Every house rule, table convention, or situational ruling is design work, shaping the underlying logic of play. Even deciding when not to roll is a design choice that changes the structure of risk and pacing.
- Gameplay: The GM is effectively designing the play loop. They craft how challenges are presented, how choices are meaningful, how consequences unfold, and how pacing ebbs and flows. This is design through facilitation: constructing gameplay structures (dungeon exploration, mystery solving, social negotiation, survival tension) that encourage specific player behaviors and feelings.
- Player experience: The GM shapes player experience by tone and framing (how descriptions evoke mood or theme), challenge and pacing (when to create pressure or relief), reward structures (what the table celebrates, e.g. discovery, creativity, survival, heroism, or horror), social contract (what behaviors and expectations the GM encourages.)
In Electric Bastionland, which contains some of the best Tabletop RPG GM advices, Chris McDowall states that the Conductor (Gamemaster) is a Game Designer. Mark of the Odd/Odd-like games like Electric Bastionland, and other OSR/NSR games are known to have modular rules/mechanics and what folks might deem as "rules light". Because these games don't have rules for every single possible thing. Hence why the OSR maxim, "Rulings, Not Rules" is pretty popular. When you make these rulings, or even new rules, you take the role of the Gamemaster as a Game Designer.
The "Conductor is a Game Designer" section shows why this is meant to be. And it also explains how a Gamemaster should make a new rule or mechanic:
- Simple
- Transparent
- Decisive
Oh, I can already see the messages coming. "But this is for OSR style of play! You don't do that in other games!"
Nope! Back to the earlier points regarding Game Design. I'm 100% sure this also applies to the most popular Tabletop RPG. How many times have you decide when the PC needs to make a check? That simple act is also Game Design. You're designing the gameplay loop on the fly for your table. Those Challenge Ratings and the balancing? Game Design.
Powered by the Apocalypse? The Conversation? As the MC, you manage the flow of conversation. The rules mediate it. Where do the rules come from? Moves. Which MC move should you do? You decide. Your decision is your ruling. You're doing Game Design on the fly.
Dwiz (A Knight at the Opera) states that game design is when you make rules and procedures. It's answering the "how" in how things work. It's the description of how skill checks work, or how combat works. Aren't those what Gamemasters do when they're running the game?
All art is something people take part in. Even if you’re just watching a movie, you’re still part of it. You’re filling in the blanks in your own head, feeling things, imagining things. Games just take that idea further, they let you really interact. That’s what makes them so fun: you get to shape your own experience and affect how the story or world turns out.
Tabletop RPGs take that to the next level. The “art” only exists when you and your friends sit together, talk, and imagine things. The person who made the rules or story isn’t really controlling what happens. You are. The game only becomes real because you play it and bring it to life.
And every time you come up with an idea, make a choice or a ruling, or figure out how to do something in the game, you’re actually doing a bit of game design yourself.
So play those games you've been wanting to try out! Try out different styles! They're not reserved for Game Designers, as in those who want to make games. If you're a GM, you're already a Game Designer.