2016-07-07 Being a RPG Referee

This post is a translation of an old post I wrote back in 2014 about the responsibilities of a GM—or referee, as I like to call myself in English. As I translate from German to English, I’ll note that sentences are longer and more convoluted than usual. Welcome to the German Way. 🙂

an old post

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Sometimes I meet people in my games that would like to run a campaign. Sometimes, they just hope that the current group will stay together and keep playing, at the same location, at the same time. If you’re already playing with friends looking for a new referee, then that’s a great way to start. But sometimes just wanting to run a game is not good enough...

• Referees must *find new players* on Facebook, Google+, Nearby Gamers, forums, friends, partners, relatives, coworkers, and so on. Yes, everybody should share in this responsibility, but in my experience, the referee is usually the one with the biggest network.
• Referees must *coordinate schedules*. Somebody has to announce game dates. When game day is moved around a lot, then players like me, people with no spontaneous personalities and inflexible tendencies, will have a hard time dealing with this. I can’t come on short notice, and when game day is canceled I’m angry because I would have preferred doing something else instead. Sooner or later, game day will get a lower priority and it won’t be belong before I’ll be making other plans just to be sure that I’ve got something going on for sure.
• Referees must *solve conflicts*. Players trash talking gays, prostitutes, foreigners? Anybody can speak up, but when I’m a guest somewhere else, I might feel that I’d rather send a friendly good bye email rather than engage in the conflict and play with such people. As a referee, we’re not only responsible for finding new players, we’re also responsible for maintaining a pleasant gaming culture at the table.
• Referees must *pick or propose rules* they like. There’s no point in picking a game the referee doesn’t like to run.
• Referees must *explain rules*, clarify them, establish rulings, remind players of the rules. Sure, you can delegate the rules to a player, but in general it won’t work all that well. It’s a tricky thing to contradict the referee, breaking the flow, asking for short retcons, i.e. the alteration of previously established facts in the continuity of the events at the table.
• Referees *determine spot light time* and need to intervene. Some players are louder than others, have more ideas than others, constantly convince their fellow players to change their minds. Sure, the distribution of introverts and extroverts is a natural thing and often the behavior matches what people enjoy most. And yet, this must not get out of hand. A clear turn order, allowing quiet players to make particular decisions without interference from their fellow players and similar small interventions will help balance spot light.
• Referees are *responsible for the timing*. When do we start, when do we stop, do we begin *in media res*, do we end with a cliff hanger, do we have an extra half hour, should we aim for a close? As a referee, one of your eyes is always watching the clock.
• Referees are *responsible for the tempo*. Is the game boring and we need to push on, or do we chill and take in the scene, listen to long speeches and enjoy the little details? Referees react when players pick up their phones, yawn, start doodling, sort dice, or stack dice.
• Referees *run the game*. When they’re unsure, the table loses focus. When they are sure of themselves, players can focus on the game.
• Referees usually *host the game*. This is maybe a European thing where space is expensive and thus game shops are small and offer no organized play or open tables, and pubs and coffee shops are crowded. We meet at home. We invite strangers to play in our living rooms. And that’s why referees usually provide the books, the binders, the material, the extra dice, pens, erasers, mats, water jars, glasses, bowls for chips and dried fruit, pistachios, peanuts, tangerines, or dishes for trash.
• Referees must make *time to prepare*. As a player, you can afford to just show up for game night and not know a thing. As a referee, you will have to think about the game, take notes, have dreams...
• Referees must *write session reports*. Players don’t often do that. It’s great when they do, don’t get me wrong. But it’s hard to force them if they don’t, and you need notes to create continuity. Somebody has to go through the last session and think about what happened. Players won’t remember the details. They won’t embellish events. As a player, I’ll just scribble a few notes on the margins of my character sheet. I’m not going to write a session report.
• Referees must *create a setting*. It can be small, a dungeon, a village, a wilderness, a city, multiple cities, a whole surface world, a network of underworlds, a beyond, the planes, everything needs thought, setting books must be read if you decide to use a published setting.
• Referees must *prepare adventures*. Or they need to prepare situations that can lead to conflict. And as we saw with this list, this is not the only thing they need to do!

I don’t want to scare anybody. Being a referee is a great hobby. I just want to prevent people from thinking that all it takes is to read an adventure and show up somewhere in order to run a game. There are many responsibilities which end up being ours.

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At the time, there was an interesting discussion on G+ where people talked about running a game as a service and delegating tasks. My first reaction to all these responses was always the thought: “I wish!” Yes, I do. But I wrote this list remembering friends and acquaintances, convention games and statements from fellow players, people wanting to take over one of my groups, asking whether I know any players looking for a game, complaining about players not mapping or not writing session reports, or not reading the session reports they wrote, and I think to myself: “Stop dreaming! Sure, that would be nice but primarily, this is *your* job.”

And yes, there are game systems that do without some of these responsibilities. Some games require no preparation, some games require no explicit referee, but most of the responsibilities I listed remain. You don’t need to prep a plot for *Mountain Witch* but somebody still has to know the rules. You don’t need to have a referee for *Western City* but you still need a host. You don’t need to learn about a setting in *Dungeon World* as you can create a setting together when the game starts, but everything else still holds true.

​#RPG