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 term1979

GM screen

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.

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.

Origin

TSR's Dungeon Masters Screen, printed with the most frequently used charts from AD&D, appeared alongside the 1979 Dungeon Masters Guide.

Quick answers

What does "GM screen" mean?
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.
Where does the term "GM screen" come from?
TSR's Dungeon Masters Screen, printed with the most frequently used charts from AD&D, appeared alongside the 1979 Dungeon Masters Guide.

Nearby in the archive

Game Master

Tabletop term

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.

Fudging

Tabletop term

When a Game Master secretly alters a die roll or a monster's statistics, usually to spare the party or keep the story on course. Whether it is kindness or cheating is one of the hobby's oldest arguments.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons

Tabletop RPG1977–1989

Gary Gygax's three hardcovers of 1977–79 turned D&D's scattered booklets into an exhaustive, tournament-ready rulebook — the orange-spined canon of the 1980s boom.

TSR, Inc.

RPG publisher1973–1997

The Lake Geneva basement partnership that printed 1,000 copies of Dungeons & Dragons in 1974, grew into a $40-million-a-year publisher, and collapsed under its own debts in 1997.

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