Friday, November 11, 2022

By Any Other Name

Like most people who got into the hobby in the late 1970s or early '80s, my first roleplaying game was Dungeons & Dragons. However, my second RPG was Gamma World and one of the things that struck me about it at the time was that it didn't have a special name for its referee. For some reason, I'd assumed that, just as D&D has a Dungeon Master, Gamma World would have something equally distinct, perhaps a Mutant Master. That it didn't was a bit of a disappointment. 

I don't know where I'd gotten the idea that the referee in every RPG should have a special name for its referee, because most of the games I encountered in those first years after I'd discovered D&D did not. Generally, they used Game Master, Referee, or even Judge. There were exceptions, of course, like Top Secret's Administrator and Call of Cthulhu's Keeper of Arcane Lore, but they were actually few and far between.

Are there any other notable examples of RPGs from prior to 1990 or so that use an unusual name for their referees?

20 comments:

  1. The Morrow Project referred to the referee/GM as the "Project Director"

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  2. Golden Heroes (Games Workshop 1984) used the term Scenario Supervisor which has a rather unfortunate acronym.

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  3. Sholari for SkyRealms of Jorune.

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  4. The first edition of Ars Magica (1987) used the term "storyguide," an obvious precursor of "storyteller" which would be Mark Rein-Hagen's go-to for World of Darkness in the '90s.

    Kind of funny that CoC used "keeper" when most other Chaosium games (ElfQuest, Stormbringer, Superworld, etc.) used the generic "gamemaster." Come to think of it, would have loved to see an "ElfMaster" or "ChaosMaster."
    ; )

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    1. I believe that the use of the word "keeper" in CoC was one of the ways that Sandy Petersen left his mark on the game.

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  5. The Pacesetter games (CHILL, Star Ace and TimeMaster) each had a CM: CHILL Master, Campaign Master and Continuum Master respectively.

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  6. T&T had the term Dungeon Master n the rulebook well before it was ever published in D&D

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  7. Star Trek (Heritage, 1978) called them the Mission Master.

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  8. I do like Mutant Master for Gamma World.

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  9. I wonder, if the name Dungeon Master, lends subconscious bias towards the opfor/dungeon denizens; whereas Referee is a rather neutral term.

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  10. The folks I rolled with back in 1977-1985 just used "DM" as a catchall for all games, regardless of what the rules specified.

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  11. Gamma-ster seems way too obvious for Gamma World

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  12. You are apparently not the first person to head down this path: https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/146387/many-names-gamemasters

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  13. Advanced Fighting Fantasy 1E (1989) used the term Director, which was copied in AFF 2E (2010++), and the characters were called Heroes. Interestingly, the original Fighting Fantasy RPG (1984), by UK Steve Jackson, used GamesMaster instead.

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    1. AFF used a film-making metaphor to explain how role-playing games worked, hence the use of "Director". Why they felt the need to explain through metaphor when, presumably, AFF players would know what a role-playing game was, I don't know.

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  14. It was "judge" in the marvel superheroes TSR game.

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  15. The Fantasy Trip used FM, for Fantasy Master. We always said DM, though. I don't know if the modern release of TFT uses FM.

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  16. It is only a small difference, but FGU's Bushido uses "Gamesmaster" instead of "Game Master," which I actually think sounds better.

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