Настроение:	contemplative
Entry tags:	gaming

The DM Was a Mistake

The Dungeon Master was, in hindsight, a design blunder of historic proportions. That is not to deny that a skilled DM can elevate a table, occasionally even to brilliance. But the very structure of the role is a contradiction: it offers the promise of collective storytelling while vesting absolute authority in a single individual. From this seed grows most of the hobby’s dysfunction.

Let us begin with the obvious. Role-playing games were conceived as games. Games, by definition, are governed by rules, and the drama emerges when players interpret and apply those rules. To play chess, one does not require a priestly figure hovering over the board, interpreting the spirit of the bishop’s diagonal. Yet in tabletop RPGs, players have been told they cannot explore imaginary worlds unless one person dons the black robe of authority. The moment they disagree with the “judge,” the magic evaporates.

The tragedy is not that a good DM cannot exist. They can, and do, and some players are fortunate enough to find one. The tragedy is that the system assumes their existence. A mediocre or self-indulgent DM does not merely lower the quality of the experience; they transform the entire game into a theater of ego. At that point, the advertised activity—players exploring worlds, testing possibilities, and interpreting lore through agreed procedures—is lost. What remains is the DM’s story hour, with the players reduced to an obedient chorus.

The industry, alas, doubled down on this model. Companies realized that the DM was their primary customer: the one who bought the books, studied the lore, and initiated others into the rite. Instead of empowering groups to share the role of adjudication—something not only feasible but elegantly simple—they enshrined the DM as the indispensable centerpiece. In doing so, they guaranteed that the hobby would appear to outsiders as a curious cult, half game, half séance, with one celebrant summoning monsters while others gazed on. No wonder moral panics found fertile soil.

There is, however, another path. Games with shared authority, or no DM at all, demonstrate that the true joy of role-playing lies in the players themselves interpreting the world and assigning probability to events. “Can one hundred Jedi defeat Darth Vader?” becomes a matter of lore and consensus, not vetoed by narrative fiat. The answer may vary, but it will be our answer, not decreed from a self-appointed throne.

To some, this suggestion will sound like heresy. To others, it is merely common sense: when we sit down to play, the story belongs to everyone. The sooner we recognize that the Dungeon Master was never a requirement but a historical accident, the sooner the hobby can shed its cultic trappings and become what it was always meant to be—an accessible, collective exploration of imagination.