GM Authority

“The key for these games is GM authority over the story’s content and integrity at all points, including managing the input by players. Even system results are judged appropriate or not by the GM; ‘fudging’ Fortune outcomes is overtly granted as a GM right.

“The Golden Rule of White Wolf games is a covert way to say the same thing: ignore any rule that interferes with fun. No one, I presume, thinks that any player may invoke the Golden Rule at any time; what it’s really saying is that the GM may ignore any rule (or any player who invokes it) that ruins his or her idea of what should happen.”

-Ron Edwards, from “Simulationism: The Right to Dream”

One of my favorite paragraphs in Apocalypse world is right at the beginning of the Master of Ceremonies section: “There are a million ways to GM games; Apocalypse World calls for one way in particular. This chapter is it. Follow these rules. The whole rest of the game is built upon this.” The character moves are the lauded darlings of the Bakers’s game, but the MC rules are every bit as critical to the Apocalypse World engine. As they say, the whole game is built upon it. The conversation, while it plays out smoothly and organically, is actually tightly structured. Moreover, it is the MC’s moves that create all the narrative movement in the story, and you can’t force that story on the players unless they make a move or look to you to make their lives interesting. In a surprisingly short text, the Bakers codify an entire system of creating a cooperative story—and not just any story, but one that is dramatic and riveting and cool.