Game Master (GM)

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The Game Master (GM) is the architect of a Mezia RPG game. The GM creates and introduces many aspects of the world to the players and weaves their decisions into a story spanning a single session or a prolonged campaign.

A game master's role is to guide their players through a shared adventure. The GM accomplishes this through the three pillars of game mastery: World, Story, and Rules. The world has towns populated with NPCs and dungeons filled with monsters, traps, and treasure for the player characters to discover and interact with. The story ties the seemingly unrelated pieces of the world together, revealing how the actions of the PCs play into a grander scheme. The rules of the game are designed to keep things fair and balanced, and it is the GM's role to referee when disputes come up.

With all the responsibilities a game master has, it can be easy to get overwhelmed trying to do everything at once. Mezia RPG and this wiki are designed to offload some of the work for GMs, letting you get to the best part - running a game - faster. Mezia is a world with many features already built, allowing you to focus on finer details and fit them in with existing elements. The campaigns run by GMs before you are visible to all, so you can just pick one and play through it, tweaking little bits to better fit your vision without having to craete the whole story. The rules are all here, and linked to make finding the specific rule you need as easy as possible. The community of Mezia GMs and players exists here too, so you're never far from someone to get advice from.

Mastery of Worlds

Mezia RPG was designed to fit into the world of Mezia, but the game master may choose to adapt the rules to a world of their own making. As more adventures are run in Mezia, the world gains new characters, creatures, and settlements. This makes Mezia an ever growing world built by everyone who spends time there. The dream is for Mezia to grow into a world greater than any one person or institution could design. A place with new secrets to encounter around every corner.

Start by reading the Mezia page, which covers a broad range of topics, and dig deeper into whatever catches your interest. Geography, history, politics, religion, and more all blend together to create a more complete world.

It is important to develop consistent patterns to create a believable world the players can get lost in. Patterns are important on the macro as well as micro scale. On a macro scale, levels of technological advancement, magical capacity, and political and religious alliances should remain relatively similar regardless of where in the world one is. On a micro scale, players should encounter most of the same NPCs whenever they visit the same town or tavern. Without consistency built in from the beginning, changes to the pattern likely won't be noticed.

Example - If the players buy herbs every time they visit a town, and in every town the herb merchant is part of the same family, a pattern has been established. Once that pattern is broken, like visiting a town where the players are expecting an herb merchant from the same family but instead encounter someone entirely different, the world becomes a little more intriguing. Players may begin asking: "Why does this town have a different herb merchant?" "Have we moved out of that family's territory?" "Did this new merchant get rid of the family member we were expecting?" Questions like these can create plot hooks or turn a minor character into a major part of the story, all because of consistency and patterns.

Mastery of Stories

A story takes the world and plunges the players and their characters into it. Each story is threaded into the wider world, and bit by bit creates a canvas displaying the complete tale. A story can be big, such as the overarching plot of a villain that drives your campaign, or small, such as a side quest for a single character that is completed in no time at all. Both have a place in the game, and effective use of stories is what transforms the game from 5 friends sitting around a table tossing dice for 4 hours into a memorable, emotion-rich experience that's talked about for years.

The big stories are usually created ahead of time, with the important characters fleshed out and perhaps a few events planned to draw attention to the significance of the plot. Big stories are aided by literary techniques such as foreshadowing and use of backstories to connect past, present, and future. A great plot will often draw players towards it, making them want to find out more about it and learn where it leads.

The smaller stories are sometimes planned ahead, but just as often they can be improvised on the spot. The great thing about playing with other people is that each person is going to think and respond to situations a little differently. One player's interaction with an NPC can lead them down a side path you never considered before. Sometimes these side quests can be even more memorable for the player, and they create a sense of depth that there's more going on in the world than just the main events.

Like with worldbuilding, storytelling is a collaborative experience on this wiki. Feel free to explore th campaigns others have played, and when you're ready you can add your own.

Mastery of Rules

With just a world and a story you can create a novel, a movie script, a play, or any other form of entertainment which is presented in a non-interactive form. But you can't create a game. Even the simplest games of imagination, like "the floor is lava", have a set of rules everyone must follow. Breaking the rules is unfair, or worse cheating, and generally makes the game less fun. So, like all games before and after it, Mezia has rules.

A good place to start is to emphasize that Mezia is a collaborative game. In general, the players are working together to accomplish a goal the GM set up for them. The collaboration doesn't end at the players though. The GM is also collaborating with the players by ensuring a path to success exists, even if it's a difficult one. When GMing, keep in mind that success is not defined by obliterating your player's characters but by ensuring everyone is having a good time. In this sense the GM is more like a referee and as a referee must do two things: enforce established rules and respond to unexpected situations.

Enforcing established rules is easier in theory. The rule in question exists somewhere on this wiki and can be referenced and explained when a player tries to do something that breaks that rule. In practice, it can be difficult to enforce rules impartially. You are likely playing with your friends and playing the role of GM creates a power imbalance between you and your friend. When situations arise that require refereeing remember that it's not you vs. the player, but you setting up a successful game for all players. Sometimes just reminding the player of the rule is enough, other times you may need to enlist some of the other players to back you up on your ruling. As a GM, you will have an easier time enforcing rules and will likely have to do it less often if everyone is familiar with the rules from the start. It is recommended to go over the rules of Mezia RPG as part of your session zero.

The existing rules can't feasibly cover every possible situation that might arise. Sometimes a player wants to do something that should absolutely be possible, but there's no rule for it. In situations like this, it's up to the GM to figure out how to proceed. Maybe the situation can simply be handled narratively, the player explains what they do and that's what happens. Maybe the situation is a little more complicated then that and failure is both possible and consequential, the GM may co-opt an existing rule or improvise a new rule entirely. Be careful not replace existing rules when improvising a rule for a specific situation.

In addition to the official rules, there are homebrew rules made up to fit various situations or adjust the existing rules to fit a particular playstyle. GMs and players are encouraged to make homebrew rules, but be sure to mark them appropriately so as not to confuse others.

Start by reading the Mezia RPG page, which broadly covers the rules. The Player Character (PC) page has details on various aspects of a PC, includeing how to create one.


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