GM vs. DM

[Cha0s]

First, before I get started, I\'m going to assume you\'ve at least read the first post of this thread. If you haven\'t, you may miss some of my points. Now, moving on...

I\'ve just recently learned that the majority of GMs are completely unable to do important RP-tasks such as spawning items and NPCs. From what I\'ve heard, in fact, only two GMs can do this (plus the devs). This means that truly in-depth and advanced GM-events don\'t occur often and little events that would ideally (imho; see above link) be a part of every day life (chats with GM-controlled NPCs, miniquests, etc) don\'t occur frequently at all. Therefore, I propose the creation of a new GM (roughly equivalent to the current \"GM7\"), called the DM, or dungeon master. Dungeon masters would be recruited similarly to GMs, except that they would have to show greater responsibility and, in addition, the ability to role-play well. In my opinion, this would increase role-playing in-game tremendously.

[steuben]

so a dm is more of an event facilitator then a people herder?

hmm. it maybe an idea to consider. but the selection process should be different from the gm process. perhaps something more open. kind of with an app form and the like. with a greater emphasis on planing, organization, past experince and the like. maybe with interviews and the rest.

[Karyuu]

As I mentioned on IRC to Cha0s, I think a nice way of looking at this would be:

GMs are the OOC Policemen
DMs are the Roleplay Leaders

Splitting the tasks in such a manner will definitely encourage better organization in-game, and open the doors to a lot more people who have a great vision and ability to involve everyone in grand adventures :)

[Wired_Crawler]

The ideas in this thread (mentioned above) were not welcome with great enthusiasm, I don\'t understand, why...
I vote for adding DM \"job\" in Planeshift.

[Draklar]

Isn\'t \"Dungeon Master\" a term made purely for D&D to replace the Game Master term? Just like \"Hosse\" for DeadLands?
If so, I think if anything, it would require more original naming :P

[Neryam]

Yeah lets not call it DM, Dungeon master, that doesn\'t make any sense.
How about RPM? Role Play Leader (Also: Revolutions per minute). Or PSM, Plane Shift master.

Love the idea! We need more events

[Draklar]

\"Realm Master\" sounds good to me, personally...
Although many things starting with a \'Realm\' would sound good, I think ;)

[Drey]

i didnt read to much of this thread because i have to run off to a maths lesson.

but you are complaining that there are a lack of GMs because none of us have to level to do whatever. you want DMs to do whatever. the reason GMs dont  have to power to do things is because we have to work our way up, prove our worth ect, this takes time. that is why there are few with the power. the same would be true for DMs they would need a lot of time too to gain the trust of the devs to be able to do things.

plus we as GMs are working on things at the moment.

*flees*

[Draklar]

I think proving yourself to be a worthy Whatever Master shouldn\'t be done on the path of being the in-game police... Game Masters are supposed to keep order.
What I think Cha0s talks about is a group that would help the role-playing evironment. Two completely different things... What follows, two things that should require different ways of proving oneself.

[Drey]

yes... but if they are going to have \'powers\' they will still need to prove themselves worthy taking time. also the proving of worthy is done by judging actions and how you are over time... its just the advancement that depends on things for example how you use the powers you have weather you abuse it how you do other things. thats my view i may be wrong.

also i may be talking to far here, but idealy the GM team would be providing events and quests. one thing with this is when people like fireofsoul have tried to do something like hags, the response from the players has been pretty poor. (thats something ive said a dew times :/) and like cha0s said for now our abilities are limited but its being worked on.

another point those one or two GMs that were mentioned are the ones who have been a GM since the start of CB... and now they are in game less and less...

kind of on the same topic if any of you have plans or ideas for quests and the like PM me or another GM and we\'ll glady help you do whatever it is.

back to the happenings of drey... maths was junk we sat there and went through homework and there was like girls who sit there colouring their work in pink, personally i spent the past hour screwing up and \'scwering down\' the same piece of paper... after a couple of hours it goes all cool. now im going to sit here a while then turn up fashionably late for physics.

and them remember the whole point of this post.. any plans contact us.


ill stop edditing it now...

[Zan]

I \'ve suggested this idea before somewhere only I called them EM\'s or Event Masters.

I\'m all for such a thing but like Drey said those people should be selected with care, preferably handpicked. It is easy to mess things up, create unbalance in the game, ... if you have those kind of powers but on the other hand it would greatly increase the game experience.

If such a thing gets put in I \'m definitely going to consider joining up. I have been working at events as a normal player and some people already suggested to me that I should become a GM but unless you are a very high level one it won\'t really help you much. If I could control NPC\'s, monsters and such the possibilities increase greatly.

One problem I see is that the system is far too unstable for that kind of things being messed with at the moment. I don\'t know how it is but I wouldn\'t want to crash then entire server just because I tried to put an event together. There also shouldn\'t be too many of these or the events lose their appeal.

[Drey]

Idealy, there would be a part of the GM team who are all about events, known as \"The Event Team\", but as i have said in earlier posts due to limmited commands and abilities our options are limitted at the moments. That said we are working on a few ideas at the moment, also stfrn has a few things in the works...

[Cha0s]

Obviously care needs to be taken selecting the DM/EM/PSM/whatever team (I don\'t really care what you call them! :P ). However, I disagree strongly with the current system setup. I am modeling my thoughts on the NWN server mentioned in the above thread, which was pretty complex, so I\'m going to elaborate a bit.

First, only major events (requiring 15 or so players, I\'d say) should be announced before-hand on the forums. Little events with one or two players or may a slightly larger party should be run spontaneously, all the time, with no announcement in-game or on the forums. How would this work?

Illustration:
DM/EM/PSM possess some NPC and walks up to huddle of players. \"Excuse me fellow citizens of Hydlaa, my name is . I know you probably don\'t know me, but could you do me a favor?\" Players respond, RP continues, DM/EM/PSM sends players to retrieve some item somewhere in the middle of nowhere. DM/EM/PSM sets up special fights with monsters along the way, culminating in a large battle at the end for the nice item which they bring back to the original NPC.

Simple, somewhat-realistic. Good role-players will be able to make up better stories easily (that was a toy example ;) ). This brings up another point, DMs/EMs/PSMs need to be excellent role-players or they won\'t be able to do their job.

That (*points up*) is the first part. The second part is the creation of two new forums. First, the DM/EM/PSM Coordination forum, which includes character profiles for NPCs and discussion on planned events. This forum would be restricted to DMs/EMs/PSMs, of course. Secondly, the In-Game Roleplay forum would be created. This forum would be used by DM/EM/PSM to introduce major events in-character (as their NPC of choice) and for players to post about events they participated in. The DMs/EMs/PSMs would also post OOC information at the end of their IC post explaining the types of characters needed for the event and the date/time it would take place. This forum could also become a place where players could post in-character diaries (of events with DMs/EMs/PSMs or of just things that they did during the day). The important thing is that every post (except stickied rules, of course) is in character (with minimal OOC notes allowed at the end of a post). These two forums would ensure a more uniform world (as DMs/EMs/PMs would all know the same information) and would allow players not participating in certain events to hear of them and keep up with major going-ons in the world.

Anyway, if the devs can find time to recruit role-players to act as DMs/EMs/PSMs and to create the two forums mentioned above, I think it would act as a huge boost to the role-play community.

EDIT: oops... that was long...

[provisionist1]

ChaOs, I agree with you entirely, I think this would add a fantastic new aspect to the game, people would take their time for no one will know when a NPC will wake from their current zombie state. There would be less run to sewer, kill, kill, kill, run to Old Harny, run back to sewer etc. (replace sewers with dungeons, arena, or anything else you wish, even people that have been around before me still do this.) Of course for the NPC to be posessed, some new code will likely be needed, but doesn\'t sound like much should need to be changed.

I also don\'t care what it\'s called, but Dungeon Master should not be copied lest Wizards of the Coast rain fury upon the land.

Cheers for proposing this,

Xirius

[lanser]

most excellent idea Cha0s I\'m all in favour, although I think the DM/etc. should be completely separate from the Game Masters and not have the /kick /mute punishment powers and only use NPC\'s that would ensure that they couldn\'t be pestered