Gamemasters in Wargames

[Easy E]

Game Masters you say?  Is this supposed to be about Wargame Design or RPG Design?  Game Masters are a Role-playing Game thing.  It is one of their defining traits! 

Yeah..... about that. 

Game Masters (Referees, Umpires, Control) have been part of wargaming since the very beginning.  I am not an expert on the history of Wargaming, but some of the earliest examples were Kriegspiel.  This was a wargame used by the Prussian General Staff to help train officers in the conduct of warfare after the Napoleonic Wars.  It relied heavily on other Officers to act as referees to interpret and apply orders in the game. 

This tradition stayed with wargames, and is still used in many Politico-Military wargames run today.  In 2024, the US Coast Guard ran a wargame to help prepare participants to think about US Coast Guard doctrine for the next 30 years, and it was run by a Game Master.  The same is true of many of the Wargames regarding the Taiwan Strait or the (in)famous Millennial Challenge wargame.

Readers probably also recall that Role-Playing games themselves were just a down-scaled wargame where the players handled 1-character at a time rather than units of troops.  RPGs are well-known for using Game Masters.  This was a practice taken from the roots in wargaming from early versions like Chainmail.   

In the Hobby, Miniature Wargaming market the Game Master was also a common component in the mid to late 70s and 80s.  Many of us got our start in wargaming with Warhammer: Rogue Trader.  This game heavily features a Game Master for scenario design, balancing forces, deployment, and mission creation.  They also ran NPCs, surprise encounters, and made rules interpretations and decisions during the game.  This tradition continues in Games Workshop's Inquisitor as well.       

Looking at the coverage of Historicon got me ruminating a bit about Gamemasters and their role in the wargaming hobby.  My thoughts can be found on my blog if you are so inclined:

https://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2024/07/wargame-design-discussion-game-masters.html

The key points are:

- Gamemasters can do a lot of positive for a game
- Teach the game
- Handle disputes
- Make rulings
- Build narrative
- Add social lubricant

However, they went away for a few reasons, and are not coming back commercially:
- Primacy of rules
- Rise of pick-up culture
- 3 players is a hurdle
- Competitive focus

However, I am interested in your thoughts on the role of Gamemasters in wargames?  What can they add?  Why did they fall out of favor in commercial rulesets?  Can they make a comeback?  Have you ever designed a wargame specifically for use with a game master?  What benefits have you had with a GMed game?  Tell us the story! 

[Aethelflaeda was framed]

Make a comeback?  They never fell off, even with the current crop of rule books, if you go to a con, the GM will be there, and they are probably not playing on a side.

If there is anything that has changed in the desire of players to use a GM or not, it probably comes from computer gaming or non-plot centric dungeon crawl playing.  The very process of shoot’em ups mechanics appeals to a lot of the less imaginatives  or who have never seen alternatives, but i think there will always be those who prefer more fog of war, command control friction, using psychological ruse d’guerre and less than straightforward victory conditions and finding the routes to get there.  GMs remain the best way to achieve these sorts of scenarios and campaigns.

[Elbows]

I think they're a superb thing...but it's almost never a reality in wargames.

I'd say namely it's because modern wargames are not written with a GM in mind (this is probably the biggest reason), and it's often much easier to simply play a game against someone.

I'm a huge fan of having a third party for many reasons:

1) Set up terrain.
2) Design a scenario (often with information hidden from one or both players)
3) Can handle information which is "Fog of War", etc.
4) Handle any disputes
5) Make scenario/game adjustments on the fly if the game is going totally sideways

[Easy E]

Make a comeback?  They never fell off, even with the current crop of rule books, if you go to a con, the GM will be there, and they are probably not playing on a side.

If there is anything that has changed in the desire of players to use a GM or not, it probably comes from computer gaming or non-plot centric dungeon crawl playing.  The very process of shoot’em ups mechanics appeals to a lot of the less imaginatives  or who have never seen alternatives, but i think there will always be those who prefer more fog of war, command control friction, using psychological ruse d’guerre and less than straightforward victory conditions and finding the routes to get there.  GMs remain the best way to achieve these sorts of scenarios and campaigns.

Indeed, coverage of Historicon is what got me thinking about GMs again.  However, I see very few commercial wargames that explicitly are built to use a GM.

[Aethelflaeda was framed]

Explicitly designed or built to use them hasn’t been in a published rule set I have ever seen, at least not since the seventies, except for RPGs, but it doesn’t preclude them either.  I think just about every designer figures that certain mechanics such as double blind play would require it and would expect it to be added by those who want it,without a grudge.

[Freddy]

I'd really like to play with a game master, but
-for most games finding an opponent is hard enough
-designing rules with a GM in mind is a good excuse for lazy rule writing, and that should be avoided. I prefer tight rules- it is always easier to story-ize/GM-ize a good ruleset than to repair a lazily written one.

[Easy E]

-designing rules with a GM in mind is a good excuse for lazy rule writing.

Tell me more about that?

[Aethelflaeda was framed]

I'd really like to play with a game master, but
-for most games finding an opponent is hard enough
-designing rules with a GM in mind is a good excuse for lazy rule writing, and that should be avoided. I prefer tight rules- it is always easier to story-ize/GM-ize a good ruleset than to repair a lazily written one.

All depends who has a better sense of history or game design, the designer with his asinine assumptions and biases which need to be altered or the game master who has asinine assumptions and biases of another sort, that had no business making those corrections!

[ithoriel]

Four of the last five games I played had what were effectively GMs, though they didn't call themselves that.

In each case they added something positive to the game.

[Cat]

Don't think I've ever seen a set of miniatures rules that explicitly calls for a GM.
 
I do lots of gaming at US conventions where GMing is just the norm of how to put on a game.  Exceedingly useful to be able to facilitate the flow of the game, explain rules, etc.  If I'm running a game, I'll only jump in to play if the numbers of players are low and one more will help round out the sides.
 
Even for a lot of gaming at the FLGS, I'll GM/referee if we have a lot of players, and jump in to play to make an even number.

[carlos marighela]

Directing Staff on exercise. There's yer real Games Master but with the added ability to lob flash bangs, mortar sims and smoke grenades along with the ability to declare selected players dead for the afternoon. No point arguing the toss or making snide remarks about the need for glasses, their word is as that of God and they make up the rules as they go along. Only the magic words 'END EX' frees you from their dread powers.

[Freddy]

Tell me more about that?

If you go through  Warlord's HailCaesar/PikeShotte/BlackPowder books, it contains several references to umpires and scenario rules. I do not like this kind of a design, a game ruleset shall make you able to play pickup games with 5-6 basic scenarios and a customizable-but-balanced army building system. This is the base you can upgrade with custom scenarios, house rules and GM actions if you want.
I really like narrative games and playing with a GM should be fun. But a good system shall work without these too.

[Warren Abox]

There are quite a few guys experimenting with miniature wargame campaigns that utilize a GM to preserve such things as hidden movement and fog of war.  Most of them are looking at the old masters, like Tony Bath and Donald Featherstone, for guidance because it has become a lost art to have a neutral third-party GM.  The advent of online gaming and always-on communications by having a phone in your pocket 24/7 is a huge boon to this style of play, allowing for a Tony Bath style campaigns ala Hyboria again, and at a much faster pace.  In some cases, they are even doing the map-based movement using the GM, and when a fight happens, the two players just take turns resolving it and report the results to the rest of the players.

It takes a lot of trust, but with the right group of guys it makes for a really fun experience.  You really feel like the leader of a nation when your armies clash and you have to sit and wait for the results from the front lines.

On the flip side, there are a lot of guys experimenting with adding PvP conflict and faction play to role-playing games.  One of the things that RPGs lost over the years was the player vs. player vibe in favor of players vs. GM('s theoretically neutrally run NPCs).  It turns out you don't have to give up the PvP if you approach RPGs with a more wargamer attitude.  These guys are building large factions/armies, and playing out the big sweeping movements on maps as a wargame campaign, but have managed to marry that with the one-on-one aspects of conventional RPG play.  It turns out AD&D 1e scales beautifully, allowing for just one set of rules to be used for 1-on-1 fights and mass battles.

[edit to add: Here's a link to the sort of thing I'm seeing out there.  This one uses a variation on David Wesley's game Braunstein, which bridges the wargame-RPG gap quite nicely:
https://stephensmith.substack.com/p/whats-better-than-a-battle-braunstein

[jon_1066]

I nearly always play with (or as) an umpire these days.

Multiplayer games particularly are improved with one as they can keep things moving and also allows for different victory conditions/fog of war/scenario specific things.

Scenario driven games are much better if both sides are unaware of the other's victory conditions or forces available.

[Easy E]

If you go through  Warlord's HailCaesar/PikeShotte/BlackPowder books, it contains several references to umpires and scenario rules. I do not like this kind of a design, a game ruleset shall make you able to play pickup games with 5-6 basic scenarios and a customizable-but-balanced army building system. This is the base you can upgrade with custom scenarios, house rules and GM actions if you want.
I really like narrative games and playing with a GM should be fun. But a good system shall work without these too.

Thanks Freddy. 

I talk about this a bit in the post.  My feeling is that the Warlord series of games is designed from a different cultural perspective than the current market is demanding.  Therefore, what is driving the move away from GMs in games is more about the culture moving into an "individual" phase rather than a "group" phase.  Therefore, what is consider "solid" game design now maybe out of style in a few generations when the pendulum swings back to more group focused wargames. 

This shift maybe closer than we think.  The recent rise in popularity of RPGs and board games with middle-aged consumers could be an early sign of these changes happening.  Meanwhile, the wargame space is still lagging a bit as they develop more solo play experiences. 

Anyway, all that cultural stuff is way beyond the scope of the article, but I think hints at some of the "WHY" behind the shift.