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Neil Reynolds

@neilreynolds.bsky.social

140 followers 140 following 70 posts

writer, producer, gm, creator, dog dad.
https://neilreynolds.name

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Reposted by Neil Reynolds

Grant Howitt

@gshowitt.bsky.social

Writing a GM section is hard.

So instead I wrote down every role I could imagine that a GM might play and instructed the reader to kind of figure it out themselves as they go

WHAT DOES BEING A GAMESMASTER INVOLVE?
As Gamesmaster, you’ll have a lot of different roles to play. Here are some of them in no particular order; you’ll adopt all, some, more, or none of these during every single session.

You don’t have to be all of these things all at once, nor do you have to do all of them yourself - when you’re starting out, as long as players are getting the chance to roll dice and mess around they’ll probably still have fun. As you play more, you’ll find which ones you enjoy and which ones you don’t, and you’ll find your style.

FUN ADMINISTRATOR
If it wasn’t for you, this game would never happen. You arranged a time and date. You reserved the back room in the pub to play. You helped everyone make their characters. You’re the first person they talk to if they can’t make it to a game, and you’re the final judge as to whether a session goes ahead as planned or must be rescheduled. You’re taking responsibility for all the background details that let the foreground details - the game - work.

PETTY GOD
This is your world. We just described it in loose terms - it’s coming out of your mouth, and you’re making all the decisions. You can adjust numerical values up and down as you wish. You can wipe cities, countries, concepts off the map entirely if you don’t like them. You alone determine whether things are possible or impossible, and you can dictate how dangerous a given task is with ease. Nothing happens unless you want it to. The player characters are scrubbing about in this world of yours, and you graciously let them do so, because they’re having fun. And so are you; you call the shots, you set the boundaries, you show them the fantastic world you’ve dreamed into being.

ORACLE
You are the sole focus of interaction that the players have with the game. In one direction, you are the source of all information about the fiction at the table: so if they want to know what colour a non-player character’s eyes are, they have to ask you and you’re beholden to tell them, or tell them how their characters could find out. In the other direction, you are the fuzzy authority that stands between every player and us, the designers of the game, and therefore the interpreter of the rules. All fictional and mechanical action goes through you.

A CAST OF THOUSANDS
You are everyone else in the world that isn’t a player character. You invent and then adopt their mannerisms, you spin together obvious motivations and secret desires, and you flip between your charges with ease. Sure: many of their voices might sound …

TOUR GUIDE
We’ve written a guidebook for a world that doesn’t exist, and you’re the tour guide who’s leading slack-jawed holidaymakers around that world. You know everything there is to know about the game world - and if you don’t know, you can make it up, and that’s just as good. You’re relentlessly enthusiastic, you give evocative descriptions, and you clue the players into what’s interesting or important - and you know all the best places to take them, too, so they’ll experience the world as best they can.

WET COMPUTER
At the core of every roleplaying game is a set of rules that power the experience, and you are the fallible, non-silicate computer on which these rules run. You know the rules, you enforce them (or ignore them, as you see fit), and you remind players of how best to interact with them. Players might use some bits themselves - rolling to hit, for example, or keeping track of their character’s health - but you’re the ultimate authority on what rule to use when.

CON ARTIST
Players? Bunch of feckless rubes. Look at them, wide-eyed and open-mouthed: they think this is a living, breathing world. They think that you’ve got this all written down, like some kind of Tolkien; they couldn’t be more wrong. You’re just making it up on the fly. There’s nothing behind the curtain, no master plan, no wheels within wheels: just you, regurgitating some half-remembered details about Bloodborne and talking about bones breaking a lot because that makes them wince. They’ll buy anything you sell ‘em.

WORKSHOP LEADER
You don’t have all the answers, but you know where to find them: inside the players’ heads. You ask them questions like “Who are we meeting here?” “What’s the most dangerous thing that awaits you on your journey?” “Which one of you does this guy hate the most?” and then you listen to the answers and incorporate them into the story. You love it - it saves work, saves time, and means that the players are more involved and engaged than ever. Involved and enga…

DRUMMER
The drummer sets the pace. In a band, they dictate the song’s tempo. In a regiment, they dictate the marching speed. (In a marching band they do both, presumably.) You’re in charge of saying when things begin and end, how long a scene takes to play out, how long a non-player character waffles on about their problems, how descriptive an average description is, and so on. You can cut away from situations and cut back later, you can put the pressure on players to make a decision, or you can leave them to chat to one another unobstructed as the hours roll by.

ABSOLUTE BASTARD
You’re going to kill them. You’ve trapped them in your lair. They dared to step up and try to defeat your monsters, overthrow your villains, and now they’re on the back foot. Smash them to fucking bits. Throw ‘em through a window, rip off arms and legs, take grim pleasure when their luck turns against them. No-one gets anywhere by being nice all the time - and the players don’t want you to be nice all the time. They want their characters to get beaten up, humiliated, murdered, hung-drawn-and-quartered. You know that this is a masochistic endeavour and you are happy to indulge them.

TORTURED ARTIST
You always wanted to be creative, and this is your outlet. You’ve spun a world of torment and tragedy (or light-hearted slapstick, depending on the game) for your players to explore - or crafted a complex story within someone else’s, full of betrayals and comeuppances and juicy details. You’ve taken the time to make something clever and you can’t wait for your friends to admire it; what matters most is getting the artistic intent of your world across to the players so they can react appropriately.

OBSESSIVE FAN
Oh my god. You love the player characters so much. Like your favourite character in your favourite TV show, you’re fascinated to see what they’ll do next - and you can probably take a good guess at what it’ll be, because you know them so well. You get a bit sad when bad things happen to…

August 26, 2025 at 5:28 PM

Neil Reynolds

@neilreynolds.bsky.social

My most powerful takeaway from reading the Daggerheart core book—beyond wanting to run it—is to amplify the narrative weight of my 5e skill checks that fall in that fuzzy middle of the DC spread. Give a few seemingly low-consequence rolls the power to viscerally twist the whole narrative. ⚔️

June 21, 2025 at 12:43 AM

Neil Reynolds

@neilreynolds.bsky.social

Last night was fun

Dimension 20 at the Hollywood Bowl photo of stage

June 2, 2025 at 2:42 PM

Neil Reynolds

@neilreynolds.bsky.social

Creating some YouTube videos about Witchlight and my primary anxiety is do I have enough footage of me making coffee

May 12, 2025 at 6:33 PM

Neil Reynolds

@neilreynolds.bsky.social

🧵 Reflections on YOU: A thread! To celebrate the end of YOU (#YouNetflix to be clear, although you also deserve to be celebrated) I’m reflecting on all five seasons, which spans seven (!) years of my career. Not wholly, just fragments, things that stick out.

April 24, 2025 at 6:35 PM

Neil Reynolds

@neilreynolds.bsky.social

My favorite work of art is currently @worldsbeyondnumber.bsky.social. Pinnacle storytelling, improv, acting, gaming, writing, design, production, scoring, producing. Every facet of it is aspirational, a perfect balance of intimate and epic. Cannot recommend it enough, which is why I keep trying to

April 15, 2025 at 6:29 PM