Welcome to Guidance, Private Sanctuary’s source for tips and techniques for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, written by Everyman Gamer Alexander Augunas. Today, we’re going to be looking at four more flavors of GMs.

So we have a saying in journalism (which I suppose I technically am): people stop to see the bad. So I sort of cheated last week when I only picked on the types of “bad GMs” for last week’s article. But never in my wildest dreams did I think that the article would be SO popular that it generated nearly twice our (the Private Sanctuary Podcast’s) normal social media reach in a day.

Now, normally I don’t mind when I have a more negative topic in the pipeline; the things I write about our generally neutral, so having a negative one here or there isn’t a big deal. But as I was reading the comments, I was stunned to see that people were mostly fixating on the fact that most of my stories were from my experiences at the Pathfinder Society, and were twisting my words around to claim that I was saying that all Pathfinder Society gaming experiences are bad. That isn’t true at ALL folks, and in order to try and reverse some of the negativity I’m going to focus on more types of GMs today, and they’re all going to be positive all of them.

But first, an intermission.

GM Alignment

A few savvy folks noticed that all of my code names for GMs were based on outsiders. That’s because in my experience, GM playstyle can be broken down into a nine-grid alignment system that’s pretty darn similar to that in Pathfinder. GM Alignment is a two-axis system, which I’ll describe below:

• Fun vs. Unfun (Aka Good vs. Evil): Your basic job as a GM is to create a fun experience for your players, and if your experience isn’t fun, your game is going to die. End of discussion. It might end with none of your players showing up anymore. It might end with your local venture captain telling you to “take a break” from GMing. Whatever happens, Unfun GMs never last long.
• Structure vs. Improvisation (Aka Law vs. Chaos): This axis, as in Pathfinder, is void of a morality (fun, in this case). Structure can be fun. So can Improvisation. This is more based on GM playstyle than anything else, really.
• Neutrality: So, what does true neutrality look like in this system? Well, there are two interpretations: the Neutral GM could be the “perfect balance;” someone who perfectly balances fun and unfun, structure and improvisation. I’ve never seen that, so I couldn’t tell you if its evne possible. The other possibility is much more likely; the newbie. Just like how most children are Neutral in Pathfinder, most new GMs are neutral in this system because they’re too new to have a strong preference.

One last thing; I mostly looked at last weeks GM flavors in terms of player death, but with these new, shinier definitions let’s go and fill in the blanks:

• The Devil (Unfun Structure): The devil GM uses the structure in the game in a decidedly unfun way; usually a way that creates enjoyment for himself at the expense of the other players at the table. (Aka using the rules to screw over PCs.)
• The Demon (Unfun Improvisation): The demon GM comes up with crazy, nearly nonsensical reasons to create enjoyment for himself at the cost of other people’s fun. Sometimes this is rules-related, but more often the demon tries to use the rules to explain what he thinks people in the world “would do,” that matches his own unfun desires.
• The Daemon (Unfun): The daemon GM uses the rules and his own personal justifications to make an unfun scenario. Usually the “unfun” is generated at the cost of one specific PC, but sometimes it can be the entire group. At any case, the daemon GM uses the rules guided by his own improvisations and whims to create unfun situations.
• The Protean (Improvisation): The protean doesn’t need any more explaination then was said last week; he doesn’t care about the rules, he cares more about improvisation. He may not go out of his way to make a fun or an unfun environment; he’s usually just interested in telling a story and doesn’t care much for input. This structure works for some people, but its not usually gamers; gamers want to, you know, play the game. Proteans aren’t always interested in the game.
• The Inevitable (Structure): Unlike the others on this list, the inevitable can actually be a VERY fun GM if you like a challenge. The reason I say this is that the inevitable pulls no punches; he doesn’t allow your feelings influence the situations that he has pain-stakingly crafted. If the dice are good to you, good to you. If the are not, he might even cry with you as he brutally destroys you. This is the most common PFS GM alignment simply because it’s the alignment that PFS generally promotes in the Guide to Organized Play; after all, if you follow the dice regardless of how they landed, it is REALLY hard to be dissatisfied with the GM because rules are rules. So again, nothing WRONG with this type of GM.

And with that done, let’s move on to more types of GMs.

The Arbiter GM (aka the Archon)

A few months ago, I ran a module for my local PFS lodge called Masks of the Living God. Without giving away too much, the PCs are expected to infiltrate a local template to figure out what’s going on there. Well, the PCs figured it out REALLY quickly, and most didn’t want to go through the “let’s figure out what this religion’s deal is” storyline that everyone knew was coming. They had decided that they had seen enough, so they got their equipment back ASAP and started smashing. Well sadly, the module is VERY clear about what happens when the PCs do this, so I played it as written. The PCs ended up fighting two higher-level NPCs AND a mask golem at the same time, and they were getting trounced royally. You could feel the fun and energy depleting from the table. Luckily for them, the module specifically calls for a sort of “GM fiat” based upon how the PCs interacted with a specific character during the adventure. The paladin’s interactions with this character were positive, so I decided to use the character to help them. I told the PCs that this character became infused with the power of the paladin’s god, manifesting his holy symbol on his brow. I ruled this as the character retraining his 3 class levels to a life mystery oracle instantly and had him spam three rounds of channel positive energy for the PCs before he collapsed in a heap. With the extra healing, the PCs were able to narrowly avoid death and continue on with the mod.

As you might have guessed, this is the category that I consider myself – a GM who uses the rules strictly, but tries to use them to help the game stay fun for the players. Fighting an encounter that you can’t possibly win is NOT fun, and its even less fun to die in PFS at the awkward Level 2–4 range that Masks of the Living God takes place in; you have enough games on the character that you almost have a day’s worth of playtime on the character (if 1 level = 3 4-hour scenarios, then Level 2 is 24 hours), but at that point in the game you’re all too low to pay the exuberant 5,250 gp cost for a raise dead spell. So I did what I could as written in the module’s rules to help my players. To compare this to the inevitable and the devil, the inevitable impersonably takes no prisoners, the devil delights in the brutality in his kill (emphasis on his), and the arbiter uses even the most brutal defeat as a means to continue the story.

To be clear, an arbiter isn’t opposed to killing players. What he’s opposed to is creating an air of unfun, so death to bad luck or total party death with no way to continue the adventure are things that the arbiter fights to avoid. To the arbiter, the structure of the game’s rules are what give the game its form. They are something praise and enjoy.

The Muse GM (aka the Azata)

This is going to be the ONLY story that I share in today’s article that isn’t in PFS, because like the protean the azata GM doesn’t thrive in Pathfinder Society. My good buddy is 100% an Azata GM, which basically amounts to, “I’m an awesome story teller and flexible enough to just DO rather than need the rules to tell me how.” If you want to see an example of one such time, go to Paizo’s webstore and search for my Ultimate Charisma product; Ultimate Charisma’s cover is 100% based on an ad-libbed encounter that my Azata GM made up for us on the spot. In a nutshell, our little start-up down was under the rule of pirates and we wanted to break the hold they had over us. Our GM had planned for something catastrophic to happen to them off-screen to give us the impression of a living world that breathes without our actions, but stubborn me wrote this crazy-huge plan for toppling the pirates ourselves. So we murdered a rakshasa pirate and I impersonaged him, going to this big pirate summit that we learned of. Our GM didn’t intend for me to be there, so one thing lead to another and I ended up getting myself into this massive pirate brawl after a “freedom fighter” (aka “terrorist who was on our side”) blew up all of the pirates’ leadership. On the spot, the GM came up with this crazy scenario where I was running up and down the coast looking for pirates who could help me seize and sail one of the few ships that survived the cataclysmic explosion. It was an AMAZING encounter, and to date I have absolutely no idea how you would write rules for something like that. NO idea…. (I don’t stop trying, though!)

So when you think “chaotic” GM you likely assume that this is another “the rules mean nothing to me,” GM. Well, that’s not true. The muse GM is a storyteller first, and the rules are simply an end to that means. The muse will use the rules because if she doesn’t, she’s not really playing Pathfinder, is she? But at the same time, she doesn’t let herself be confined by the rules. She makes up stuff on the spot, but it always works towards the “fun.” She’s also not afraid to bend the rules in a way that creates the experience she wants. Where the devil GM will throw a tyrannosaurus at a group of low-level PCs just to watch them die, the azata uses them to create drama and to give the PCs to “tacticfully retreat” from. The azata GM is all about creating mood and atmosphere with her storytelling as well. She knows that there is fun in the surprise and the unknown, and she isn’t afraid to dance with the limits of her own imagination in order to challenge her plays to do the same.

The Wonka GM (aka the Agathion)

One of my good friends (who’ll know who he is the precise moment that he reads this section) is a Wonka GM. He is THE Wonka GM, as a matter of fact. A few weeks ago he demonstrated this handedly when we played in a scenario that involved in a lot of investigative work. Two of the people in our party were rolling really well on Diplomacy checks to gather information, so the GM was working his butt off to portray those NPCs convincingly in a way that made it fun for the people involved. Meanwhile, two people at the table wanted to roleplay, but had split off from the group to do their own objectives. So they started roleplaying with each other (and I was there too, sort of) and the GM let them roleplay. I’ve had GMs who’d get annoyed that the players weren’t listening to the conversation, but what did he do? When the split-group later asked the GM what they had “missed” while they were roleplaying, he told the roleplayers to roleplay with the characters he had been roleplaying with to get the information. Later, we ran into a situation where we were going to get nuked by a sleep spell, and there wasn’t much we could do about it. A player asked the GM if he could stuff his smelling salts into his face to help him stay up. The GM replied, “No, that’s not what they do. But if you spill the smelling salts on the ground, ruining the item, I’ll allow you to make a new save the moment you pass out on the ground, if you should fail.” This use of smelling salts is only halfway in the rules, but it was supported by the rules enough that it REALLY made sense, and most importantly it was fun for the player; he fell asleep on his first failed save, but passed thanks to the smelling salts on the floor. The GM got what he wanted; the bloodrager was inconvenienced and had to eat a few attacks of opportunity to stand from prone. The bloodrager got what he wanted; he wasn’t completely out of the fight because of one bad roll. Both the GM and the player won.

The Wonka GM is exactly what the name implies; he’s a whimsical character who is fully devoted to one thing: fun and excitement. He doesn’t care much how he gets there; he knows the rules well enough that he uses them frequently and to his best possible ability, but he also isn’t afraid to step away from them much when he needs to. Compared to the arbiter, the Wonka messes with the rules in significantly more libral ways; where the arbiter interprets rules in ways that promotes fun and the the muse makes her own rules on the fly in ways that promote fun, the Wonka doesn’t really care what he’s doing as long as fun is being had.

The Zen GM (aka the Aeon / Mortal)

So the Zen GM actually falls into two categories; the aeon and the mortal. Both epitomize balance between Fun/Unfun and Structure/Improvisation, but for two entirely different reasons which I will try to capture below.

My friend runs a lot of PFS, and to date I’ve NEVER seen anyone so zen at the table. He’s equally good at, like, everything. Including self-indulging unfun. But he manages to perfectly blend it in a way that I don’t hate. He effortlessly shifts from improvising roleplay to hard, mechanical fights. He breaks up AP volumes with side quests pulled from random sources. He indulges some players while making others sweat. He’s the ultimate force of RP balance. Seriously.

A different friend of mine tried to run Skull and Shackles for us a few years ago. It was his first time playing as GM, and he didn’t really read the AP volume or understand the various rules very well. He was a player. He know how to play the game. But he wasn’t very good at keeping the gaming running at a good pace; he would linger too long in roleplaying situations and he would take a long time trying to figure out his stat blocks. That game only lasts two sessions, but to this day the players all agree that he wasn’t a fun or an unfun GM. He hadn’t played as GM enough to really have that made clear.

My first story is an example of an aeon GM while my second is a mortal GM. All GMs need to start somewhere, and you need to remember that those new GMs might not have a firm grasp on what makes a game REALLY fun or REALLY structured or REALLY improvised yet; even if they know what they like as a player, that doesn’t mean they know how to translate that to the other side of the screen. On the otherhand, the aeon GM is the opposite of this; he has so thoroughly mastered play that he knows how to effortlessly shift his game to suit everyone, to “spread the fun” around, hitting what very different types of players like. I don’t know if the Neutral GM is the “Best” GM, but he’s pretty darn close to being everyone’s second or even third favorite GM.

And with that, I think I’m going to take a break from GM flavors for a bit. What do you think? What sort of GM alignment is YOUR favorite, and what sort of GM are YOU? What traits make a game fun for you? Leave your answers below, and I’ll see you on Friday when we finally Carry On, Wayward Sons! (and Daughters!) See you then!

Alexander “Alex” Augunas has been playing roleplaying games since 2007, which isn’t nearly as long as 90% of his colleagues. Alexander is an active freelancer for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and is best known as the author of the Pact Magic Unbound series by Radiance House. Alex is the owner of Everyman Gaming, LLC and is often stylized as the Everyman Gamer in honor of Guidance’s original home. Alex also cohosts the Private Sanctuary Podcast, along with fellow blogger Anthony Li, and you can follow their exploits on Facebook in the 3.5 Private Sanctuary Group, or on Alex’s Twitter, @AlJAug.