The Lantern Hall
Painting: an ancient lexicon open on a carved lectern in a dark chapel of books, glowing runes and symbols lifting off its pages like fireflies.
TermTabletop term

Game Master

The player who runs the game: describing the world, voicing every Non-player character, adjudicating rules and deciding what the dice mean. Different games give the role different names, such as Dungeon Master in D&D, Storyteller in Vampire: The Masquerade and Keeper in Call of Cthulhu. The role descends from the neutral umpire of refereed wargames.

The player who runs the game: describing the world, voicing every Non-player character, adjudicating rules and deciding what the dice mean. Different games give the role different names, such as Dungeon Master in D&D, Storyteller in Vampire: The Masquerade and Keeper in Call of Cthulhu. The role descends from the neutral umpire of refereed wargames.

Origin

Early D&D called the role the referee; the term Dungeon Master soon became D&D's own, and Game Master became the generic term across the hobby.

Quick answers

What does "Game Master" mean?
The player who runs the game: describing the world, voicing every Non-player character, adjudicating rules and deciding what the dice mean. Different games give the role different names, such as Dungeon Master in D&D, Storyteller in Vampire: The Masquerade and Keeper in Call of Cthulhu. The role descends from the neutral umpire of refereed wargames.
Where does the term "Game Master" come from?
Early D&D called the role the referee; the term Dungeon Master soon became D&D's own, and Game Master became the generic term across the hobby.

Nearby in the archive

Braunstein

Wargamec. 1969

A Minnesota wargame in which nearly twenty players were each handed a single townsperson to play — and started talking, scheming and dueling instead of fighting the battle.

Painting: three small plain tan rulebooks in a wood-grain cardboard box beside strange new polyhedral dice, pencils and a graph-paper dungeon map.

Dungeons & Dragons

Tabletop RPG1974

Three little booklets in a woodgrain box, hand-assembled in Lake Geneva in January 1974: the first published roleplaying game, and the template for every tabletop and computer RPG since.

Player character

Tabletop term1974

A character controlled by one of the players rather than by the Game Master. The shift from commanding armies to embodying a single persistent hero, who remembers, grows and can die, is what separated the roleplaying game from the wargame.

GM screen

Tabletop term1979

A folding cardboard screen that hides the Game Master's maps and dice from the players while printing the most-used tables on the inside. It is both a practical tool and a symbol of the referee's secret knowledge.

Railroading

Tabletop term

When a Game Master forces the story down a predetermined track regardless of players' choices, like a train that can only go one way. Usually a criticism, it describes blocked exits, invincible villains and plots that happen no matter what the characters do.

Sandbox

General term

A game world the player explores freely, choosing goals rather than following a set plot. In tabletop play it describes a campaign where the referee prepares places and factions rather than a storyline; in video games it describes open worlds such as The Elder Scrolls or Minecraft.

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