I’m posting this early since I will have limited net access tomorrow.
On Friday night, I get to lay aside my Dungeon Master’s Screen, maps, stack of books and other DM paraphernalia to grab a lone piece of paper, one rule book, a set of dice, a pencil and a mini. I get to play Star Wars Saga edition and my good friend Franky is going to be the game master.
Whenever I get to play in a new game I get nervous. Not because I fear I won’t play my character properly Rather, I’m nervous that I’ll turn into a Backseat GM again!
A Backseat GM will:
- give ‘the look ™’ when the GM fumbles a rule.
- reach out for the book for a rule before the GM is finished saying “Let me check”
- try to use meta game knowledge of adventure design to move the story forward
- argue with the GM if a ruling is made that contradicts a ruling in his own game
- begrudgingly recognize the GM’s authority but may let any frustration show in passive aggressive ways.
- will have the urge to do all of the above but will fight it tooth and nail to leave the poor GM alone.
I really worry about turning like that because, quite frankly, I would hate to have players do it in my own games (fortunately I don’t… or if I do, I’m now good enough to ignore them). Additionally I know that if I turn on backseat GMing mode, my attention will be focused on the GM and not on my game, robbing of the simple pleasure of playing just one character in someone else’s world.
Willfully giving up control is another, entirely different issue.
Discussing this with people on Twitter yesterday (many suffer from this) made me realize that I tend to become a backseat GM only when I sense that the GM in front of me isn’t confident in his skill to pull off an adequate game session. I sense the fear and I don’t like that. I think that one of the requirements for me to implicitly trust other GMs is for them to project a sense of competent confidence. In such cases, the backseat GM goes in the trunk and I can enjoy the show.
I know I sure did in Chgowiz’ Gen Con Swords & Wizardry game.
So of course, my goal is to focus solely on the game. It will be a new game system (albeit familiar) and an all new gaming group. I’ll be playing a Scoundrel to the core, shooting first and asking questions later. And if all else fails… there’s always a grenade.
What about you, are you a Backseat GM? When does it trigger? How do you deal with it when it does? How do you avoid it?
Post publication edit: In a freaky unplanned coincidence, NewbieDM posted about the very same subject too! Had we known we would have made this into a Ha said/He said post. Enjoy his take on things here.
I do it all the time. >_< I can't help it. I try not to let it really impact the game or my enjoyment thereof, but I don't always manage. In a game that's lots of fun with good poeple, I can more easily ignore problems with GMing or when the GM does something I don't agree with. When the game doesn't have that "fun factor" to keep it afloat, it's a lot harder to put all that aside, especially when the GMing issues are a large (or sole) reason that the game isn't great in the first place.
.-= WolfSamurai´s last blog ..WolfSamurai: @danceswithelvis Okay, so just business at usual then. =-.
I, as a DM, have a guy in my group who, in addition to being our obligatory rules-lawyer and evil schemer, is a backseat DM. He’s one of my oldest friends, and I don’t really get irritated by it 90% of the time. I actually like having someone who has such an exhaustive knowledge of the rules ready to back me up – it’s only when he directly challenges my rulings mid-game that it becomes a problem.
As a player (as I mentioned on Twitter), I myself sometimes succumb to this disease, but usually am content to roleplay and tactically plan.
Afterthought: do you play D&D in English? Or are there French-language books and such in Quebec?
I took up the DM chair when my long term DM finally wanted to try being a player. He become a constant backseat DM. He would tell me how to make rules calls as soon as the situation came up, argue with me on most judgment calls I made or just be generally passive aggressive about the way I was doing things. I don’t think he even realized he was doing it.
Eventually I angrily shot him down and told him that he can DM his own games, but he can’t DM mine. Since then he’s been a model player. He is still the guy I go to when I want input on how to handle a situation and I let him have a lot of free reign in the story. So things came into a happy balance eventually.
.-= Nicholas´s last blog ..Star Crossed Dragons =-.
@Wolf: I think that the fun factor is severly affected by one’s patience. Some people can hold off for an hour or two before getting what they seek in a RPG, others far less. But I agree that if we perceive the GM to be the sole cause of lack of fun, goodwill vanishes and backseat GMing can become rampant.
@Tyrconnel: We play in French with English books. I’ve seen the 4e books in French but they are more expensive and we like to have common nomenclature for everything.
@Nick: Old habits die hard. I have 26 years of RPG experience and I don’t think that all the games I was a PC in would fill a year of weekly games. I’m that much of a GM.
My friend became interested in DM’ing late last year, so i handed over my campaign for 4 weeks while he was on holiday from teaching. During this time i was a model player that helped out when asked.
Last weekend we started his very first campaign and my very first PC. ‘The Look’ happened alot i’m sad to say, i was very passive aggressive had to fight urges to make corrections and what not.
I walked away a little shocked and noted my behaviour for the next game.
A long time ago, one of my friends was the most horrible backseat GM. He did all the points you mentioned above. And the rules lawyering, oh the ruleslawyering….
Right now we have a situation where we have 2 GM’s both playing in eachother’s game. And though they do not go Backseat GM, they do have another annoying quirck. They both want to play their character to the ultimate perfection. They are used to being in control but as players they are not, and it eats at them. And every little thing that doesn’t go as they hoped becomes a big issue. They both already stated that “if this or that keeps going like this or that, then I can’t play this character anymore”. We have luckily gotten it through to them a bit now that to keep a good campaign running, you have to make concessions every now and then, so your character can work together with the group. Something they both completely understand as GM’s but when they’re players, it seems very hard for them to get that. But they’ll learn 🙂
I and a few other guys I play with a guilty of this.
Couple of reasons it comes up for us, one we were all playing D&D games and decided that if one DM came up with a rule it would stand for all of our games at the table so there wouldn’t be any confusion amongst any one playing. So any rule that came up for debate a call was made we’d continue play and then debate the rule later.
Also the three of us are all game designers which means we want to know the rules backwards and forwards in order to understand everything we would be asking our future players to do. Which meant we would spend a lot of time looking up rules in order to memorize all of them.
Best of luck to you no backseat GMing.
.-= Tyson J. Hayes´s last blog ..Character Considerations: Naming Your Character =-.
My current DM (poor soul) has two ex-DMs in his party of players; me and another. I’ve managed to let go of the DM reigns quite successfully I believe (although it took me about 9 months of play to reach that point).
The other guy? Not so much. But he and the DM have butted heads often enough (quite spectacularly in the beginning) that he’s acknowledged that arguing with the DM is less fun than playing a game that isn’t technically RAW.
I’m guilty, but I have an excuse; I was never a player until now. I DM’d from the beginning of our group, because _Someone had to_. I’m lacking the fundamentals of being a good player.
When I’m good, I’m the one checking the map, planning, giving status reports and being radio chatter in a firefight, an armchair general. Mostly it helps, because my fellow players are more roleplayers and social characters.
When I’m bad I metagame more than usual, and I’m pretty sure I broke at least one moment of surprise for the DM by stating the obvious, like mapping mismatches pointing to hidden teleports and so on. It gets worse when the party splits up (far too often) and I can’t stand still when it’s someone else’s turn. My excuse is hyperactivity and them being too slow in their beginners investigatory technique. (God, I already sound like a dick.)
When I’m ugly, I openly confront the GM about his choices for the adventure. Happened only once yet, but if there’ll again be something of the magnitude of a public Assassin Parade, I think I’ll collapse. (Also, crowds that wait for hours without end just to catch a glimpse of the DMPC assassins and then immediately lose interest, disperse and don’t give them a second thought. [So they can conveniently enter a safehouse that practiacally has a neon sign saying “SECRET ASSASSIN LORD HIDEOUT”]) I’m rambling.
Worst case, I’d probably be a dick about him sticking to some rules and not to others. Gotta learn to respect other people’s Rule of Cool tolerance.
P.S: If your player would tell you that he was biting off a rat’s head as his combat action, would you really be able to ask him to roll for success? I wouldn’t. Being hardcore should always succeed.
I’m guilty of that sometimes. I may find thousand of reasons, but they are just excuses (like saying I’m the DM most of the time, so I would act like a DM even when I’m not).
I’ve tried to outguess the DM more than once, even trying to figure out how he would design his dungeon in order to face the least amount of enemies possible–avoiding unnecessary combats. The problem is I’ve did that not in character, abusing the metagame.
So, giving the bulletpoints:
-give ‘the look ™’ when the GM fumbles a rule (check)
-reach out for the book for a rule before the GM is finished saying “Let me check” (check)
-try to use meta game knowledge of adventure design to move the story forward (check)
But at least the other points I’m not guilty of. Call me a half-Backseat GM then. 🙂
I know two backseat DMs, and I myself have those tendencies as well. Generally we don’t let ourselves go off unless something pretty outrageous happens; there was one instance when all three of us were playing with a friend of ours DMing, and the newbie DM railroaded us hard, and in such a way that the entire party got killed because we didn’t go along with one part of the “plot.” All three of us went off.
But usually I think the only times we backseat DM at all are when the game seems to be stalling. The last time I remember doing this was when one of the newer DMs in my extended gaming group was starting up an adventure and was slow to get the action started. I sort of just ordered the other players to describe their characters to the group… But to be honest, that seemed to get him going, and things were smooth after that.
Luckily, none of us are rules lawyers, we’re usually willing to go along with an on-the-spot ruling. We just get frustrated when we’re not having fun.
.-= Spenser´s last blog ..What Are The PCs? =-.
I have found that I haven’t had much fun while playing in other people’s games. I hope that this is due to the games not being D&D rather than my desire to jump on the other side of the screen and run it myself. I’ll be playing in a Pathfinder game starting next week, the DM is admittedly new to the whole d20 system and has already asked my opinion on numerous aspects.
Hopefully I’ll be able to sit back and enjoy this game, only time will tell.
Cool Stories one and all.
Especially the assassin’s parade… I already see toddlers with severed heads ballons, wearing ‘I killed people at the ’08 parade’ T-shirts and yielding battery operated poisonous daggers.
I thought of adding rules lawyering but that’s just being a dick, it’s not an exclusive Backseat DM technique.
One thing that bears mentioning though is that helping out a new DM with the rules is all right in my book, as long as the helping out goes both ways (remind DM of things for and against the PCs) and that the helping player accepts any fair sounding rulings.
Great thread so far!
I definitely have a tendency to backseat DM, although I try real hard to fight it. I assume this is because I began as a DM rather than a player, so sometimes it is tough for me to let it go.
Oddly, my trigger tends to be less rules related than story related. If I am immersed in the storyline I tend to sit back and enjoy it. However, if I feel the story is going off the rails I tend to spend too much time trying to “fix” it from the players seat.
.-= Rob a.k.a. “A Hero”´s last blog ..Dollhouse Recap: Instinct =-.
Let’s face it, GMing is about control (not all of it, but a good chunk). As a GM, you have an incredible amount of power over the game, and it can be intoxicating (which leads to those Bad GM stories). Giving it up to be “just” a player can be difficult.
I find it hard not to put in my 2 cents when playing a game. Some things seem innocuous (“I’m just helping the GM with some things, really”), and may actually be innocent and good. But too much of anything is bad, and with backseat GMing, it can go bad fast and linger like the stench of rotten meat.
I think being aware of it is important, but also important is getting feedback from the GM to you (as a player). Communication is the key to prevention here. See how much assistance, if any, the GM is willing to tolerate. And then try to let go of the reins and just play your character. I find focusing on the character’s personality, fully fleshing them out, helps a great deal in this regard. I’m not perfect at it, but I try.
I’m playing Burning Wheel and doing 2-4, though 4 only when something contradicts the books. They are all okay and encouraged, though. Who would not want players to drive the gameplay forward and help with rules questions?
There not being a story to find, as much as story we build, might be part of why 3 is good behaviour.
.-= Tommi´s last blog ..Burning death frost doom =-.
I backseat DM. In my mind. (With lasers).
I think I do a good job at not showing it and even shedding it mid-game (as I love to RP when I mange to kick it loose).
I’m the worst backseat DM when I’m DMing.
(And I’ll be watching your backseat DMing in tomorrow’s game… uh… or is that me doing backseat RPing? Eek!)
.-= Eric Maziade´s last blog ..On the road to Spellgu- postmortem =-.
@Chatty: “I thought of adding rules lawyering but that’s just being a dick, it’s not an exclusive Backseat DM technique.”
The person in question was a weathered GM who’d know the books inside and out. And it wasn’t so much ruleslawyering I guess as saying: “Nono, I know the rules, and I definately know I can pull off a summersault here getting behind the 2 mindflayers and oneshotting both of them”. Our relatively newby GM at the time would just go “Errr sure I guess you know better then I do”. So not as much ruleslawyering I guess, as just telling the GM how it is ((even if he was sometimes just quoting the rules that worked in his favor, conveniently forgetting the one that would ruin his entire strategy).
@Conlaen: The thing about being a rule reference is that you must be objective and give the same advise independent on whoever it affects. Otherwise you’ll lose all credibility as a rule reference and just becomes a rule lawyer taking advantage of the rule when it befits him.
In our group I’m such a reference (although Chatty knows the rule as much as I do) and I’ll often get from my other player hard look because I remind the DM of a rule that hinder someone else or even myself.
The rules are the contract we have agreed upon that determine the physics of our world so we can have fun. Ignoring a rule just for yourself while imposing it on others is stealing from the other their right to have the same fun as yourself. Remove or adding rules should be done in an official way so that every one in the play group knows what are is new possibility or limitation.
So in my book either you recall rules for every one or you shut up.
@Rob: So you are more prone to step in as a backseat storyteller? That’s interesting. Thinking about it, another thing that triggers my backseat GMing is when the game starts stalling. My instigator side usually takes in such cases and I tend it backseat GM it by telling the GM I’m doing it to get the game moving.
Well… that’s what I used to do… now I’ll just throw a stun grenade if I get too bored. 🙂
@The Gun Nut: There are acceptable versions of Backseat GMing. One is shadow GMing where another player is in on the GM’s plot and helps the party go forward in the story by suggesting courses of action that go toward the GM’s planned scenes and goals. The second one is when the GM delegates traditionally GMing duties to others.
Like Yan is my Rules Keeper in our game. He’s the first guy I ask before diving into the book. You can also delegate Initiative tracking and Status tracking.
The big difference here is that this type of backseat GMing is agreed upon in advance with the GM! And is subjected to cancellation when the GM feels able and willing to take on all responsibilities.
@Eric: I can see you backseatDM when you play. Like PM I feel you have so many metathings going on in your mind that you aren’t all there! 🙂 I know that for some, analyzing a situation is a much, if not more fun than playing it. We’ll make sure you’re too busy with story tonight to focus on Franky’s GMing 🙂
@Conlaen: Like Yan says. When someone acts as a neutral Rules reference, everything is fine. If someone is using his knowledge to his advantange… that’s the definition of rules Lawyering… it just happens that your GM was too likely Newbie-ish to counter argue or shut him up 🙂
@Chatty:
I think (I hope) that I’m over trying to impress you with any RPG-related skills and will tone down the meta-gaming to regular levels 🙂
That being said, I can’t help a certain dose of meta in combat!
.-= Eric Maziade´s last blog ..On the road to Spellgu- postmortem =-.
I’m just messing with your mind man. Not that it’s going to stop me…
Must I remind you that your are going to play with world renowned players tonight? Not that I want to stress you with that you know? No pressure, nope, no siree, none!
🙂
Of course, by world renowned, I mean that a few hundred people from around the planet have read a few post talking about us… 🙂
I am often a backseat GM, particularly when we’re all learning the rules. Once there’s a level of comfort with the rules, I feel OK letting the rules drift further to the background and concentrating on playing my character.
At my best, I’m a rules reference… at other times, I remind the GM that there are rules for things they’re just breezing by. That can be important– even when you feel like a dick– if the rules your pointing out are important for a character to feel useful. [For example, ignoring the skill system in 3.x is fast– but makes being a Rouge useless.]
I’m usually pretty relaxed when someone else is DMing… except when they try to pull a fast one on the party.
As soon as the DM starts declaring “oh, your whole party suddenly falls unconscious” or “the bridge can’t hold up under your weight and breaks” I start tearing him apart. I demand saving throws and skill checks; I scrutinize the logic and logistics of the situation; I start metagaming like nobody’s business.
It’s fine to come up with fun and whimsical situations that kinda fudge how things are supposed to be, but when you start messing with my character’s life, you have to answer to the RULES.
.-= Flashman85´s last blog ..Jobless Superheroes =-.
I never did do back seat Gm’ing. When I was in a game I waited to see how game play went and if I thought the game was not fun or the players were not involved in the game enough, I just moved on to another group. At the time I was playing there were still plenty of groups out there.
.-= Art´s last blog ..What Dungeon Screen Modifications do you use? =-.
Oh I am so guilty of all of Chatty’s bullet points. It’s often passive-aggressive, and horrible of me, I know. We rotate gms in my group, and one has this nasty habit of assuming that the first idea that pops into his head is usually the best one. The first idea, in his case, is usually one that holds up for less than a minute before it leads to a situation that makes no damn sense, at which point I can feel ‘the look’ coming on. This is a skype game over maptool, so the look often precedes the strong urge to just toss my headset.
More specifically, every other session there seems to be a encounter that contains an NPC that he has his heart set on as a Potential Recurring Bad Guy. The problem is that the PRBG is always terrible at escaping our party(we have an avenger and we know how to use her) and just ends up tacking a futile extra twenty minutes of chase onto the end of a combat. I think he is slowly getting the point that ALL his monsters are disposable until they have legitimately proved otherwise, so I think the trauma with PRBGs may be behind us.
I have a few interesting tales on backseat GM’ing.
I’m GM in our current campaign and certainly 3 of the 5 guys in my group are reasonably experienced GM’s so I see my fair share of backseating from them.
One is an avid monster manual reader. More often than not before I’ve even finished describing what a monster looks like he knows exactly what it is and has at least a vague idea of the type of attacks and approximate defense values. Basically with him around, we don’t bother with knowledge checks for monsters, we just assume the party knows enough to react appropriately.
He’s also a vivid storyteller when he runs games, this tends to manifest in him taking more narrative control during conversation or RP segments of the game. Control is too strong a word, perhaps ‘leading the improv’ is a better way of stating it. He’s the first into and the last out of character in most cases.
Overall, I find most backseat GM’ing in my current campaign tends to lead to metagaming more than ‘control issues’ and I don’t really have too much of a problem with this. In fact, once the session is over (never during) I’ll reveal the mechanical aspects of certain traps or monsters that the party were intrigued by and discuss the decisions I made at the time or reveal the mechanical chances or defenses of certain creatures.
This has several benefits for us, it allows the players that ‘hidden knowledge’ they were experiencing after the fact, and allows them to analyse their strategies so they know whether they took the right approach or could they have handled it better with hindsight. It also allows us to discuss what they felt went well and what didn’t, what calls I made they did/did not agree with etc. This helps with the ‘feedback’ loop and makes sure I’m doing things they generally agree with or is providing them with an interesting time.
For me and mine, backseat GMing is a reasonably positive outcome, it’s comforting playing with people that know the rules because if I’m not 100% on something, I will generally defer to the guy who I trust has a better recall skill than me to provide me with at least an approximation of the right answer that we can resolve fully after the session is concluded
@Destrin: You cite a healthy example where backseat GMing is accepted by the whole group… and I guess that when a group is mostly made up of GMs, it’s inevitable to a certain extent.
However, I would be a bit bothered by Monster Manual Guy and I’d probably take some sort of pleasure in creating monsters that are only slightly differentt from the manual ones… just to challenge and confuse him. 🙂
@Chatty: thanks, it’s working well for us at the moment, there is the inevitable ‘hang on, I don’t think that’s how it works’ but as a general rule, people will let those slide and press on with the game then discuss it later.
I’ve been going the other way with monsters for the moment, keeping them the same as the MM but reskinning them to be something different. It’s like some kind of minigame for us:
‘hmm, burst 3 slow that leads to a paralysis…AHA, it’s a medusa!’
This will certainly get tired soon and I’ll start doing something weird to confuse him utterly and keep him on his toes 🙂
Yes, I have been guilty of this. The first time I played I wasn’t only backseat GMing, I was a very uncooperative player. I saw through his conventional fetch quests that had always irritated me when I encountered them in computer games. So, first I led the players in an off-the-rails escapade that ended up with the GM railroading us with a star destroyer (I am not kidding). Then, I just flat out refused to go along with the next fetch quest and played AGAINST the main party in trying to beat them to the punch and my character was out of the game (after the only encounter which was PvP).
I actually posted this a few months ago in my own blog in the “It’s about trust” post, and I still say it’s about trust.
So, when I sat down to play D&D 4e (quite the reverse on what you do, Chatty as I GM a SW Saga Game) my one goal was to simply have fun and turn my brain off. GMing a game means you have to be extremely on the ball and have five ideas in your head at once, it’s nice to turn that off once in a while. I don’t think I remember the names of all the NPCs even.
.-= Katana Geldar´s last blog ..Even Jedi Masters have answering machines =-.
Ooh, don’t get me started on players that don’t remember the names of NPCS! 🙂
.-= Colmarr´s last blog ..Holy Moly: Natalia Gutierrez =-.