Gamemaster authority and its applications is a recurring issue on these boards. As a GM who remembers a ram’s skull on a black background in a Dragon Magazine ad with the caption “Coming Soon”, as a GM who bought the basic book when the whole 6th World fit inside and the basic book was blue, I have this to say.

The gamemaster is a benevolent dictator, and the rules are his secret police. You don’t argue with PCs. It sets a bad example. Argue with one today, and you’re going to argue with him and one of his disciples next week. Do not make arguments. Make rulings. Cut the Gordian knot. There’s no time to discuss this in committee. The PCs are not co-GMs, they don’t help you run the game. Theme, tone, and feel are all up to you. If they don’t like it, they can quit your game and start their own.

But having a good time is the reason you got together to play in the first place. It is your job to give the PCs what they want, not what they think they need. Be alert to their desires, but not a whipping boy for them. It’s like administrating a lunatic asylum; your job is to provide for the inmates and to keep them from taking over. A gamemaster who exercises his authority timidly is no gamemaster at all - his players will burn him at the stake. Like Machiavelli wrote, it’s better to be feared than loved if you can’t have both.

If a PC finds a rules loophole that destroys game balance and the whole tone of the 6th World, don't weep. Just close the loophole. PCs have to submit to GM authority, or the whole hobby disintegrates.

An important related idea is the adversarial relationship between GM and PC. There isn’t one. You’re not trying to beat each other. The GM provides an experience and the PCs enjoy it, and return, or don’t, and go away. The GM is Walt Disney that way. A lot of PCs will think they’re struggling against the GM, and that leads down a bitter path.

Remember the asylum; remember Walt Disney; remember Machiavelli, and as a GM, you’ll be on your way.

My PC's are pretty much sedate. They'll do crazy stupid shit in-game, but I won't argue with them, and any rulings that they don't understand I clarify. This probably has something to do with the fact that none of them have read the book, though.

I think I am blessed by having a good group of players. Several of them are rules sticklers, but they do it in a way that helps out the entire group...and if something is in the rules that really unbalances the game, I make a ruling and everyone accepts it. Granted, before a ruling is made, we do talk about it, hear each side and all that.

But as you mentioned, and how my players are, we are coming together to play a game and have fun. And my players are concerned with game balance just as much as I am, so if something doesn't seem right, I am usually not the only one wanting to change it.

Also, we play several other games together as a group, so discussing rules and changes , as well as GMs putting limitations on some things is normal.

Nicely put, Zen.

One thing to add, I am not adverse to discussing rules, but that should not happen during the game session.

Agreed.

I too have been at RPG's for more than two decades.

I think as long as everyone keeps the idea that were all giving up our time to have fun then there are very few issues with GM vs Player arguements or what not.

However, that being said, I can always remember a time less than a year ago when a player (in D&D 3.5) rolled up a rokugan sorcerer/ratling shaman, and then after months of playing with his defined and limited spell list, started a game ending arguement because I wouldn't let him cast Shaman spells when he decided he needed them. This was a grown college professor.

"But...i'm a ratling shaman"

Trying explain the naming of a prestige class and a class spell list as something different got me no where.

That is and will hopefully be the only time I booted someone out and told them in no kind words not to return. Wasting an hour of my time arguing semantics on class abilities isn't playing the game or making it fun for the other players.

Trust your GM, he puts in lots of work so you can have those brief moments of glory. Though I feel its up to everyone to help balance the rules with common sense

Damn.

I agree, the GM is the final arbiter of the rules in his game. That doesn't mean that players should meekly submit to the GM, and never question what's going on.

I too have been playing for ... jesus... 26 years now. I've GM'ed. I've DM'ed. I've ST'ed. I've RM'ed. I've probably down other things. I've been a player.

It's a social activity, defined by game rules. If my GM tells me "My word is law. You shall obey what I decide" I first smack him, because he's my friend, and my friends need to know when they're being assholes. Then I say "Dude. Did you write the book?" In a few situations, the answer is "Yes" and I say "Well, okay then." In the other situations, I will say "Are you a thinking rational being, like I am?" Assuming he still considers himself such, we'll talk about it.

If I refuse to drop the point, he'll drop the "Hey, I'm the GM" card. Which I will accept, and I'll email him after the game. That usually happens at about 5-10 minutes in.

But seriously. We're grown ups. Grown ups know that people can disagree, and come to an agreement.

Zen:

As a player and a GM:

GM authority is absolute, but GM (at least not me and any I have played with) arent Omniscent.

If I belive A GM overlooked something, I will certainly point it out, and I would aspect my players to point it out.

For example:

My TM/Rigger was inside a wharehouse looking around (though van was out on defense and I was 'watching' the sensors in AR).

When I go out (almost 60 minutes of 'real time' later, the Star is waiting out there.

I (correctly IMO) point to the GM that remember I had the van/drone watching the area and had a conenction open to it/watching what it saw myself.

Gm says, Yep you did notice them... (pretty sure he had overlooked) so that is it.

Now another time, I was sleeping in my van, with my lynx 'guarding'.

GM: has me wake up at gunpoint. I point out, 'rembmer my lynx is normaly in the back and on guard'

GM: 'ohh forgot sorry', Ok you wake to the racket of machine gun fire in a small place and a cry of pain.

The first one, would have required quite a bit of 'rewinding' to have me 'notice' when the police showd up and were sort of critical to the plot, so 'somehow' the drone/me missed them.

The second one, the GM honestly overlooked and besides putting some holes is expensive equipment, didnt really change the outcome too much (he had prepared for me to be taken, OR escape) he correctly adjusted since he had overlooked something.


The point being:

GM AUTHORITY is abolute. GM's arent omniscent.

If you think they overlook something and you think it would have a significant effect, point it out. Dont ask for explanations, (dont expect them especially) and accept what ever happens, but lord knows I have forgotten/overlooked little pieces of cyber/magic/bio/tools that you might have had/used plenty of times before.

Some progressive roleplaying games would disagree. If you look at the work of indie game designers (my choice is John Wick) you'll see a lot of really interesting games that operate on the principle that the game designer isn't absolute. Look up his game Wilderness of Mirrors for the most telling example of this.

That said, for Shadowrun, you're right. In other words, this isn't an adversarial remark, but simply a suggestion that you can get some really interesting stuff when you challenge the basic definitions.

I am lucky. My players are great. There is a very small number that knows the rules better than me. But they never say "this is the rule....", they will say something like "this is in the rulebook but it is up to dog (me)...." All players follow my lead on the game without questioning my dictatorship. We are all having fun and that is what really matters. Once it is no longer fun, stop or fix it.

This happened in my games this week as GM I am tring to learn all the rules but I am a slow learner. I need to actually read the rules a few times before they really stick. My players are also reading the rules and when I am not sure how to rule something I don't want to just say this or that happens. I like that they have and bring their own books to the game as we can all look up the different areas that talk about the rule in question and help each other to understand how the rule is meant to work. If for some reason I think the rule is too light or to heavy then I make a change to in my opinion give it more balance. So I see no problem with talking about rules before during or after a gaming session.

There must be order in the fictional universal, and that order is the GM. It's a matter of personal responsibility and taste to make sure that you're a happy-go-lucky New Testament GM and not one of those darkly arbitrary Old Testament GMs.

I find a lot of arguments past that (the immutability of rules, when a GM can cheat, railroaded versus free-form plots, etc.) are all secondary to that concept.

rule zero, baby.

i don't know if it would work for every group, but considering John Wick's brag sheet, i don't think it'd be wise to discount the idea out of hand. you want popular? he did Clan War for Rokugan. he did Seventh Sea. these are names that lots and lots of RPGers know.

I find the biggest difference in GM authority comes between people who play with friends and people who play with people they only interact with through gaming. It's also an issue in large groups where time management becomes an issue. I run a group of 3 players, we have all been friends outside of gaming for several years. We talk through rules disputes, and if things breakdown it's usually a genuine misunderstanding. People don't munchkin because no one feels competitive towards the GM or other players, and would feel guilty for any rules infraction. However it seems to me from most message boards that playing like this is a luxury for most people so as a GM I would take a firmer hand with strangers, or try to keep troublemakers out of the group altogether.

That's likely true, Charlie. I have never gamed with a group I didn't know from other sources.

I have occasionally played with a new person or two, but the majority of folks were friends of mine.

Thus, the need for GM authority is much less.

But still not unnecessary.

I think GM's have the most authority who use it least. It's normal for a GM to know the rules better than the players, know the setting in greater detail, etc. Where there's a disagreement, the GM ought to be able to justify his decision to the players. And I would always do this first before laying down the law. Players have every right to question the GM's decisions and they will respect and trust a GM more if allowed to do so.

i like jerking character's strings, so i use my GM powers fairly frequently when i've got a story to involve the players in. in most situations, though, my players know what they're doing; having me sit there and adjudicate everything would be redundant. it occasionally bites me in the ass; recently, i caught a player adding more CP to his attack roll than he had skill, but i believe that was an oversight. for the most part, i just run my opposition like they were my characters, and let my players do their own GMing.

(In response to knasser's post.)

I tend to follow along the same lines. When something comes up, I listen to what the players have to say. If it's a dispute, I take into account what they're saying and make the call. If it turns out they were right, I fix it. If it turns out I was right, I tell them so. If they desire explanation, I give it freely. But in the end, the GM is the adjudicator of the game. If it comes right down to it, I have no problem saying so during a game.

So yeah, it happens after all other lines have been exhausted, but it still happens. I think any GM that says they've never finally just said "You know what guys, I'm the GM" is probably either lying or has a bad memory. Either that, or they're letting the players run over them roughshod and are just deluding themselves about their role/abilities.

I agree with Charlie in that it really depends on the size of the group and how good of friends they are. I played in college with a large group, some of which socialized to various degrees, and we quickly decided that the GM could be questioned, but if the conversation past the one minute mark the GM would make a ruling and that was it. Otherwise, one clueless and stubborn person could hold up the whole game.

Now when I played in smaller groups with good friends, the idea is not so much to play as it is to socialize, so if we get bogged down for 20 minutes about some inane semicolon placement, well, I usually get another beer.

This excepts out Paranoia, of course. There the GM (the computer) is infallible, even when he's wrong.

definitely, certain games (Paranoia, Call of Cthulhu) require the GM to be kind of a bastard.