I have been playing a lot of Eclipse Phase lately. Or rather, I have been spending a lot of time with Eclipse Phase lately.
Does not feel much like playing.
See, I’m the Game Master for those games. And as a Game Master I’m a player, so I expect, to you, know play. Because a GM is also a player.
This is repeated so many times it becomes nonsense. Obviously the GM is a player. But it begins and ends there. At that obviously, without considering the relationships and the meaning this implies with the tools and art created, or it’s materiality1.
Let's go back to Eclipse Phase. Again, the usual caveats2 apply; this is also less about Eclipse Phase and more that it was something I experienced when it happened to be around Eclipse Phase.
So, Eclipse Phase is a very pop3 game. Heavy hard rules, little space for maneuver, hefty on lore, assumes a classical relationship between players, GM and game, etc. As pop as a TTRPG it can be.
My experience with being a Eclipse Phase player with the role of GM is that I don’t have any tools at my disposal, no levers to pull, no real ways to interact with the game. I am to take a passive, almost reactive roll to all the things other players can do. The game is useless in guiding me through the assembly of scenes and scenarios, threats and even stakes; instead it talks to me as a curator of its extensive lore: this is too much, an overwhelming amount, so you are to pick which Lore players4 get to interact this scenario. You oversee rolls players are likely to ask as consequence of the many toys of trans humanity they get to okay with, and the outcome is pretty much decided by them. There are also no real guidelines how to create other characters; you are assumed to use published threats or make do making NPCs like one would a PC, which results in them being both overdesigned tools that are pretty bad to use because you are not going to be doing PC-level shenanigans with them. It is almost impossible to run the game without resorting to a published adventure — in other words, curating the Lore with an extra step.
The experience of playing Eclipse Phase as a player with a GM role is pretty akin to being a moderator for the Wiki of this/your game. Your only tool to interact with the systems5 of the game is the vague Tool of (assumed in the pop role of the GM) Authority6.
This is not exclusive to Eclipse Phase. Or pop games. Situations like this, where I find myself without levers to pull happen in a lot of contemporary games. The problem has a deeper core.
So, a GM is a player, right? And most games strive to be player-facing, to the point one almost exclusively see some element of a game described as a synonymous to “does this the Proper Way7”
The thing is, that player-facing never seems to apply to one type of player — the GM.
Let’s be honest; the GM is usually seen as the requirement for the game, a care-labor job complex, or an albatross to be tolerated (even in its absence).
What is often ignored is what I actually want to talk about.
The Joy found in GMing.
How fun it can be. The little cool levers one can pull. And just like it is considered good design to facilitate different types of cool fun for players, maybe it is time to start thinking more about the Joy of GMing.
Most games' relationship with designing for Joy for GMs is fraught or lacking. Even the best designers, those that see GMs (and players of other roles), see them as partners and peers; they offer levers and tools, but it is often the tools they use as designers. A boon, close, useful; but not always all you need and not for all kinds of fun the Joy can be.
Most games don’t think about GMs at all. Games that see them as an investment of Authority, well, address that authority:The actual levers given to the player with that role are to be some rules adjudicator or again, Wiki moderator for Lore — be the Lore picking which Adventure Module to play and/or picking/rolling through tables. A necessary conveyor; assumed to be a role that will be filled. Games that challenge popular assumptions do not tend to fare much better; they often her by not giving any tools at all, or assuming sure there is a GM, we call them on this game… Kidney Herder or Master of Puppets; there are so many token GMing sections that only seem to be an acknowledgement that this is a role that exists. Many times the GMing sections are so disconnected from the actual play of the game that it becomes pretty obvious they were done as an afterthought late in development — or even sometimes written for an entirely different game8. Sometimes this ends up with games where the GM is re-delegated to a "guide", barely a player, with no ways to interact with the systems of the game, just a bookkeeper or care labor that happens to be around, a job that they are supposed to automatically get/learn on the job and have little guidance for9; if narrative control is a good thing that players should have, the players stuck with a Guide role often have none.
Paradoxically, the games that think the most about GMs and their levers are those that want to get rid/share the GM. Treating it as an albatross, they break down what they need a GM to do and either automatize that through system design and/or break down and divide those functions across players. The thing is, in doing so as part of their progress of making a tool for art, they provide great analytical and design insight of what kinds of fun make part of the Joy and what kind of levers we should be providing GMs to enable that Joy.
I come back to Eclipse Phase, with even less insight that I usually have at the end of these. I touched briefly on narrative control; things that we want players to do, to engage with, maybe we should make sure it is to all players. Maybe when we design games, what a GM does is not the last section to be written. Maybe when we ask “can one find fun in these mechanics?”, to consider every role a player may take. When making a type of scene or mechanic, consider what the GM is doing while this is happening and ways they may interact with its systems. I don’t know. It is a point I see so lacking in consideration that I even struggle with the language to express these concerns — much less imagine ways I would approach them.
There is a lot of Joy in GMing. We just need to pay attention and celebrate when we find it.