GM vs. DM

[Cha0s]

Xirius: exactly my thinking. More RP, less power-leveling.

Lanser: DMs/EMs/PSMs *would* have normal characters so that they could talk to players en masse OOC after an event for feedback (it\'s sort of stupid when an NPC goes OOC ). Most of the time, however, they\'d use the already available invisibility feature and roam the world, looking for some likely players to RP with.

[steuben]

i just had this flash of greek myths. you know the ones where the gods take on human form and reward the worthy.

[lanser]

Originally posted by Cha0s
 Most of the time, however, they\'d use the already available invisibility feature

forgot about that ability

[Nikodemus]

That is great idea.
A RPer who was playing only pen&paper RPG gets kind of shock after he/she realizes GM in MMORPGs have often very different function. I will also say that not all GMs in MMORPGs can be RM (Realm master - as Draklar suggested) The way how is RM choosen, should be different, yet similiar to GM.

And for gods sake, don\'t call them DMs. What dungeon master means anyway? Master of the dungeon? What dungeon? Really, the fact that D&D is popular doesn\'t mean that the one who leads players through adventure must be called DM.
I give my vote for RM - Realm Master

[Cha0s]

The name isn\'t important for me. I just picked something identifiable to most people. What I\'m most concerned with is the function. If we can get something going like this *gestures up* ... well, I\'d play the game.

[Draklar]

Hmm... some further thoughts about the discussed function, and why I think it should be seperate from GMs.
I don\'t think RMs (I guess I\'ll stick with this term) should have the title sticked above their heads (or anywhere for that matter)... They shouldn\'t be different from other players. It isn\'t important to know who they are. If anyone\'s heard of Jorrit\'s role-playing \"seeds\" idea, it could even be merged.
What follows, RMs shouldn\'t be picked after answering some newbie questions. It should be done on the basis of role-players\' observations (but yeah, once again that\'s taken from discussion about Jorrit\'s idea...)
RMs shouldn\'t be bugged about things that GMs are supposed to be taking care of. Role-players not always have to be good at doing the police thing, and, as was proven many times already, Game Masters not always are good at role-playing aspects.

In the end there\'s too many differences to be made between the two to actually put them in same box.

[Zan]

I\'m not certain if I completely agree here.

I do think RM\'s and GM\'s have one main thing in common - responcibility. The GM\'s are responcible for the entire gaming community and have to keep the order therer. RM\'s are responcible for smaller sections but will most likely still deal with the same issues, just only in their specific event.

It would be disruptive if a RM needs to contact a GM every time some player is purposely trying to destroy the roleplay going on. I know from experience that those people are around and they can shut down any roleplay in a matter of minutes. In such cases I think the RM\'s should be able to mute and even teleport said player away. Aside from that RM\'s will need to be able to spawn rewards, become invisible, teleport themselves, ... basically a lot of the GM commands right now will be needed by them too.

In my opinion RM\'s need to be just as responcible and mature as GM\'s since they need to watch over the game as well (or doing the police thing as you said). They won\'t need to worry about renaming players or guilds, banning or kicking people, testing out new things ... that is all reserved for GM\'s. RM\'s will need to work on their next quest or event instead, try out scenarios, etc. They need to be creative, good at improvising, have roleplaying and organisational skills.

Basically GM\'s work for the Devs while RM\'s work for the people. There is a definite overlap though and there will need to be a lot of communication between the two but I agree that they should be separated even if it is in name alone.

[Drey]

even though i dont have uber leet RP skills, i think this would be a good thing and some good points have been made and a lot of thinking would need to be done.

though the point that i am trying to make is that these people would need to gain more trust from the devs than any of the currrent GMs have... so for you lot to get a \'team\' of some sorts, is going to take some time and work.

[Draklar]

Originally posted by Zan
It would be disruptive if a RM needs to contact a GM every time some player is purposely trying to destroy the roleplay going on. I know from experience that those people are around and they can shut down any roleplay in a matter of minutes. In such cases I think the RM\'s should be able to mute and even teleport said player away. Aside from that RM\'s will need to be able to spawn rewards, become invisible, teleport themselves, ... basically a lot of the GM commands right now will be needed by them too.

Thus I think there should be GMs present on such events as well. But RMs shouldn\'t be expected to deal with trolls, when their job would be based on making sure the event is going as it should go from the system\'s side. I would probably be able to pull off RM\'s job, but when it comes to dealing with trolls, I wouldn\'t trust my judgement. Both jobs require completely different things. If not seperated into different groups, it would show lack of organisation.

And I didn\'t say RMs wouldn\'t need to prove responsibility. I pointed out Jorrit\'s idea... And it would be a bit off-topic to explain it here... So I\'ll just say the way of picking worthy community members he presented, surely would be more efficient than what we have now with Game Masters...

[Cha0s]

I\'m not sure about methods of picking RMs (or whatever you want them called). In fact, that discussion would probably best belong in its own thread, though I will say that they should not be chosen the same way as GMs.

However, there are two points I\'d like to address. First, an RM should not have to bring a GM along on any event. RMs should have all the necessary powers (teleport, mute, etc) to maintain control during events. Firstly, it is a waste of resources to require two people to go along on an event and only have one of them actually doing something. Secondly, I do not think GMs would have fun trailing along, doing nothing while the RMs had fun RPing a story.

Though RMs should have these powers, they RMs should not have a manifesto to seek out and deal with trouble (as the GMs do). In all non-event-related cases, an RM would refer a GM to the problem if possible. Only if a GM was unavailable would an RM attempt to deal with the problem. In my opinion, an RM is not completely separate from a GM. An RM would need some of the same skills in addition to good role-playing.

On the other hand, RMs would not need powers to rename, ban, etc. These are things for GMs. In short, an RM should have the power to maintain order and weave a story of limitless possibilities, but not to deal with major \"police work.\"

[Draklar]

Originally posted by Cha0s
However, there are two points I\'d like to address. First, an RM should not have to bring a GM along on any event. RMs should have all the necessary powers (teleport, mute, etc) to maintain control during events. Firstly, it is a waste of resources to require two people to go along on an event and only have one of them actually doing something.

I don\'t see how that would be a good way of dealing with things. You can call it wasting resources, but once such RM would try to do over 100% of his/her normal possibilities by running event and dealing with trolls, then you can be sure that both attempts would end up screwed up. Sometimes it\'s better to keep some resources unused than to run out of them (keeping an eye on the event, being annoyed by trolls ruining it all, having to call GMs... it all doesn\'t sound like the event would end up in full success).
Second, saving resources in such way means that instead of putting safety in hands of an experienced guard, you want to put that safety in hands of someone who is trained to do completely different thing and what is more, someone who will be constantly concentrated on the event. That means either you have GM there or you\'re putting the whole event on a serious risk... one way or another.

Originally posted by Cha0s
Secondly, I do not think GMs would have fun trailing along, doing nothing while the RMs had fun RPing a story.

I might be missing your point here, but... How is that different from saying
I do not think GMs would have fun trailing along, doing nothing while the players had fun RPing in Planeshift.

Edit: \"Wasting resources\" actually means mental stability of the people who won\'t suffer from too much work...

[Cha0s]

I doubt things would ever get so out of hand that a GM would be needed. If things did, I\'m sure the RM would be able to cope until a GM could show up. An RM should be almost as good as a GM at keeping order, as this an important job on long events.  In addition, this would make getting an event together even harder, as the RM would have to wait for a free GM to be able to get started.
It also goes against the notion of spontaneous mini-events: \"Oh, look, some players with nothing to do. Let\'s get Harnquist over there and start something... Oh, wait... I need a GM...\" *five minutes later* \"Got my GM... wait, where\'d they go?\"

As far as your second statement, a majority of the time, I believe, the GMs are not fully paying attention to the game and so are able to do something else in addition to GMing (the exception being when they are dealing with a problem directly). To keep up with an event, they would have to pay attention the whole time, doing nothing but following around the RM for almost all of it. In addition, they would be witnessing serious RP for a long time and have no chance to join in. When wandering the world as a normal GM, the amount a real RP seen would probably be less and less exciting.

An RM needs the skills of a GM and role-playing skills. If an RM can\'t keep order, he/she will have trouble leading an event.

[Draklar]

Originally posted by Cha0s
An RM should be almost as good as a GM at keeping order, as this an important job on long events.

That means training as much as GMs do, but in creating events, plus training \'almost\' as much in keeping order. That won\'t ever happen.

Originally posted by Cha0s
It also goes against the notion of spontaneous mini-events: \"Oh, look, some players with nothing to do. Let\'s get Harnquist over there and start something... Oh, wait... I need a GM...\" *five minutes later* \"Got my GM... wait, where\'d they go?\"

I doubt things would ever get so out of hand that a GM would be needed.

That means mini-events most likely wouldn\'t need moderating powers at all.

Originally posted by Cha0s
To keep up with an event, they would have to pay attention the whole time, doing nothing but following around the RM for almost all of it.

I have to ask here... Did you actually see the way GMs work ingame? They do join role-playing situations, it\'s not like they just stand aside and watch...

Originally posted by Cha0s
An RM needs the skills of a GM and role-playing skills. If an RM can\'t keep order, he/she will have trouble leading an event.

The problem would arise when such RM would deal with someone who wasn\'t actually doing anything that bad... Just was annoying to the RM who obviously had other things to do than watch the player for a longer while to find out if he\'s really trolling or not.
I can see even more complains than we have now...

Small events most likely won\'t need moderation. Big events should have few GMs anyway. Otherwise it should be easy to call a GM when such need arises. If a RM has problems with that, how can you expect players to do such thing in similar situation. If he actually has time to observe troublesome player, then surely calling a GM wouldn\'t be a problem.

[Zan]

I feel the same about this issue as Chaos does ... why make things complicated by needing two people working together to succesfully create events? It\'s not like it is such a gigantic thing keeping the order in your event. I \'ve even had to do it as a normal player and believe me that can be extremely hard on rare occasions. Those times you need to be able to interfere yourself by simply muting the annoyance or removing them.

If you can be in charge of a quest that entertains dozens of people it is a piece of cake to remove those that purposefully disrupt that quest. Of course you wouldn\'t need to make any big decisions like banning people, just keeping order in your \'workplace\'. If you can\'t handle that basic responcibility being an RM is probably not suited for you. It \'s not just about roleplaying or having ideas but also about being able to bring them out there and create/maintain the atmosphere.

Draklar, you are right that there will be even more complaints than there are now though ... there will be more complaints without implementing this idea as well. There simply will be more complaints because there will be more players to complain and more people in charge to complain about. It can\'t be avoided ... like the dutch proverb says \"Tall trees catch a lot of wind.\" it means that when you \'re in a higher position you will always recieve more negative remarks.

[Drey]

Basicaly you just want a new GM team.