What kind of Game Master are you?
Do you fudge rolls, or let the dice kill whoever they kill? Do players build the world with you, or discover yours? 24 questions place you on six axes and match you to one of 6 GM styles, plus films, actual plays and games you can use to pitch your table or guide your style of GMing.
Spend more nights in front of the screen than behind it? Take the player style quiz.
24 questions, about 4 minutes. Answer for how you really run games.
- RulesBy the book or Bend for the moment
- PrepBuilt ahead or Made up live
- PlayTactics and logistics or Theater of the mind
- DangerDeadly world or Heroes' story
- AuthorshipMy world or Our world
- SecretsBehind the screen or Cards on the table
A self-reflection tool built on published GM theory, with no lab-grade claims. Your answers and scores stay in your browser. Our analytics only count which style you got and which way you lean on each axis.
The 6 GM styles
- The Tactical ArbiterTactical Neo-Trad (Classic roots). Fair fights and open math, with real stakes.
- The Diegetic Sandbox RefereeOld School Renaissance (OSR). Rulings over rules, a deadly sandbox and no plot.
- The Auteur DirectorTraditional (Trad) play. A grand story, with secrets behind the screen.
- The Arc ShowrunnerNeo-Trad play. Big set pieces built around the players' arcs.
- The Catalyst Co-AuthorStory games. Play the system, share the pen.
- The Systemic ArchitectWorld simulation (simulationist). The rulebook is physics, and the world is built.
Glossary
- Clock
- A named circle of 4, 6 or 8 segments. When it's full, that thing happens.
- Fail forward
- Failure still moves the scene, at a cost. Luke Crane's phrase, from Burning Wheel.
- Front
- A prepped threat, Apocalypse World style, with an impulse and a countdown clock.
- Lines and veils
- Limits set before play. Lines keep content out; veils keep it off-screen. Ron Edwards, 2003.
- Neo-Trad
- Trad since about 2015, in two kinds: collaborative (a shared point pool) or tactical (packaged abilities, rules-fluent GM).
- Oracle
- A yes/no procedure for GM-less play, with odds you set and a chance of a twist.
- OSR
- Old School Renaissance: classic dungeons, modern player-facing design. Player skill tackles the game, referees use common sense, failure buys information.
- Session zero
- A meeting before play to set expectations and limits, often building characters together.
- Story games
- A culture of player authority: players trigger flashbacks, successes can win narrative control, and GMs often don't roll.
- Trad
- A storyteller GM with a plot. Mechanics mostly serve combat; the story sits above them.
- X-Card
- Anyone can tap it to cut content, no questions asked. John Stavropoulos, 2012.
Credits and further reading
Based on John Bell's "Six Cultures of Play" (The Retired Adventurer), Robin D. Laws's player types, Christopher Chinn's Same Page Tool, Justin Alexander's The Alexandrian and Sandy Petersen's horror advice.