Greetings, programs! I'm using factor analysis to find a scientific answer to the question, "What kinds of GM styles are there?"
You're going to answer 43 questions about your GM style. All of the questions have answers ranging from "strongly X" to "strongly Y". If you're neutral, strongly ambivalent, prefer a balance between the two options, or wish there were a third answer, click the middle option. If the question doesn't apply to you at all, skip it.
Once all the data's in, I'll run the numbers and work out which questions have a lot of correlation with each other, so that GM style can be reduced to a few key factors. Those factors will be our most scientific answer to our research question. However, there's no such thing as objective science. Our questions were submitted by the MCDM community, so the final results will reflect the kinds of things the MCDM community thinks are important to ask about GM style, and the patterns of association in your responses. So if you want the factors we find to reflect who you are, please answer all the questions and send the survey to your friends.
Special thanks to Matthew Colville for coming up with this research question, and to our question designers, Geddy Lee, Tgnewman, Argent, and tidnabemit. This survey was designed by Viridian Grail.
Greetings, programs! With the MCDM community’s help, I’ve prepared a survey of GM styles, so that I can use factor analysis to find the common variables underlying GMs’ responses, and come up with a scientific answer to “what kinds of GM styles are there?” The survey has 43 questions and takes a few minutes to complete. The more people answer, the better the data we’ll get.
EDIT: 52 responses! This is great, keep em coming!
@Grail Too late; I just used the “3” answers to mean “this doesn’t apply at all to my games and it’s ridiculous that anyone would assume it might.” 😂
This applied to questions that amounted to “Do you live on Mars, or a moon of Mars?” questions that amounted to “Do you eat burgers, or pizza?” and those that amounted to “Would you rather eat nails or broken glass?” 😆
Ooh. I’d say the ones that were nails-or-glass … two things that I’d never do, and the idea of some combination or middle ground between them equally undesirable.
No thanks to nails.
No thanks to glass.
And no thanks to nails-and-glass salad.
questions i had trouble with because of build in assumptions
Do you prefer to plan and track events going on in the background, or improvise them?
i utilize a lot of random tables in prep and at the table, so i guess improvising? but on the other hand i keep track of things that were the result of random stuff.
Do you prefer rules heavy or narrative heavy systems?
systems like shadowdark, black hack and its off-shoots are rules lite, but are they narrative heavy?
Who does the worldbuilding in your setting?
i plant seeds and do a bit of initial landscaping how they grow is determined during play, but those first sessions are what sets the tone.
Do you integrate players’ backstories into the plot?
My players don’t come up with intricate backstories, but earlier adventures might have consequences later and characters created after a first characters died often get some in-world knowledge, because they are not a random farmhand setting first out to be an adventurer.
How much setting information do you share with your players out of character?
i often only have broad strokes, before it comes up at the table and if it comes up it’s often a players idea that becomes “canon”. I am discovering this world almost as much as my players.
Who is responsible for immersion?
everyone at the table, i am not a story dispenser. my role might be called Game Master, but i am as much Player of the Game as the Players of their Characters are. We are doing this together, none of us is offering a service.
Do you spend more time prepping lore and clues, or events and encounters?
i don’t see how those things are opposed to another. An armed Caravan of Drows is Lore and Encounter, the idea might have started as one or the other, but at the very least after the session is over it will be both.
How much do you enjoy PC death?
Sometimes that becomes a great story, which i enjoy, sometimes it just happens, which i don’t feel much about and sometimes it happens because I did not communicate danger well enough or players interpreted a situation way different than i did, and we only realized after the fact, which feels bad. It’s nothing i have a general opinion about.
You can answer all of those questions with one of the intermediate options. If it’s entirely 50/50, neither/neither, or both?both?both., you should answer with the middle option. The spectrum has a middle.
I did with most of them, but they still made me scratch my head a bit, simply because they don’t quite fit into my mental model of “game master” or in the case of “narrative vs rules heavy” because i am not sure what kind of games are what and ultimately if those things are mutual exclusive to begin with.
Oh, I have several too. I’ve run in Doskvol, Orden, the Planescape, and two homebrew worlds I invented. I answered all of those questions with a weighted average of My worlds.
@Grail Too late; I just used the “3” answers to mean “this doesn’t apply at all to my games and it’s ridiculous that anyone would assume it might.” 😂
This applied to questions that amounted to “Do you live on Mars, or a moon of Mars?” questions that amounted to “Do you eat burgers, or pizza?” and those that amounted to “Would you rather eat nails or broken glass?” 😆
That’s fine, a neutral answer is good too.
Out of curiosity, which questions did you find most absurd?
@Grail
Ooh. I’d say the ones that were nails-or-glass … two things that I’d never do, and the idea of some combination or middle ground between them equally undesirable.
No thanks to nails.
No thanks to glass.
And no thanks to nails-and-glass salad.
Which ones were those?
questions i had trouble with because of build in assumptions
i utilize a lot of random tables in prep and at the table, so i guess improvising? but on the other hand i keep track of things that were the result of random stuff.
systems like shadowdark, black hack and its off-shoots are rules lite, but are they narrative heavy?
i plant seeds and do a bit of initial landscaping how they grow is determined during play, but those first sessions are what sets the tone.
My players don’t come up with intricate backstories, but earlier adventures might have consequences later and characters created after a first characters died often get some in-world knowledge, because they are not a random farmhand setting first out to be an adventurer.
i often only have broad strokes, before it comes up at the table and if it comes up it’s often a players idea that becomes “canon”. I am discovering this world almost as much as my players.
everyone at the table, i am not a story dispenser. my role might be called Game Master, but i am as much Player of the Game as the Players of their Characters are. We are doing this together, none of us is offering a service.
i don’t see how those things are opposed to another. An armed Caravan of Drows is Lore and Encounter, the idea might have started as one or the other, but at the very least after the session is over it will be both.
Sometimes that becomes a great story, which i enjoy, sometimes it just happens, which i don’t feel much about and sometimes it happens because I did not communicate danger well enough or players interpreted a situation way different than i did, and we only realized after the fact, which feels bad. It’s nothing i have a general opinion about.
You can answer all of those questions with one of the intermediate options. If it’s entirely 50/50, neither/neither, or both?both?both., you should answer with the middle option. The spectrum has a middle.
I did with most of them, but they still made me scratch my head a bit, simply because they don’t quite fit into my mental model of “game master” or in the case of “narrative vs rules heavy” because i am not sure what kind of games are what and ultimately if those things are mutual exclusive to begin with.
@Grail Too many to list, but one example is “Is your game an open world sandbox or a linear railroad?”
Nails or glass. Yum.
I didn’t know there were options outside of the spectrum of those two. What’s your game?
@Grail
Most of the GMs I know have several worlds and games. Many have dozens, and some have hundreds.
So the questions that talk as if I have just one - as you just did - were strange to me.
Anyway, bedtime for me. Best of luck with it.
Oh, I have several too. I’ve run in Doskvol, Orden, the Planescape, and two homebrew worlds I invented. I answered all of those questions with a weighted average of My worlds.