Game Masters Profile

It's come to my attention that there is really no way of knowing how a GM reacts, plays, runs a campaign, etc. Would be a good thing if the players could first look at a profile of the GM that he can set up and the members, or past/present players, can give a thumbs up in relation to the profile. This could be kind of a "confirmation" of the GMs play style. This would be advantages for a player to know which Gm to pick from, whether they use house rules, modified rules, length of campaigns, etc etc etc. The reason for this need it that gamers build social relationships with other gamers. Gaming at its core is friends getting together across a table and enjoying a time of storytelling. Through this, all those get to know whom they are playing with and most of the time, you know who is running the game before they begin to run the game. this system being implemented would help people to know whom they would like to join up with.

Some of those are a good idea... others such as a "rating system" have already been discussed in previous threads. When I sit in the DM/GM chair, I generally create a blog to keep everyone on the same page, and to have any house rules and pertinent setting information available to the players. With websites such as Blogspot, it's fairly easy to set up a webpage or series of web pages. Additionally there are such sites as Obsidian Portal. For example here is the page for my previous Star Wars Saga campaign: <a href="http://the-edge-of-starlight.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow">http://the-edge-of-starlight.blogspot.com/</a> Here's one for a Warhammer Fantasy campaign: <a href="http://ashes-of-mordheim.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow">http://ashes-of-mordheim.blogspot.com/</a> And lastly here's one for a Forgotten Realms campaign: <a href="http://shadows-of-the-sword-coast.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow">http://shadows-of-the-sword-coast.blogspot.com/</a>

Sending them a private message would be a good place to start. Most DM/GMs (myself included) love to prattle on for hours about their campaign, playstyle, and most will be upfront about what they want from players. That being said, I believe there's far too many subjective variables to implement a fair "rating" system.

The issue is, not everyone likes to blog or prattle on truthfully. A thumbs up is a lot different than a rating system.

You're right. It is a far less reliable system for you to determine the quality of a GM/DM. If you're content with relying on other's opinions based on a +/- system than making an effort to do the legwork yourself, then that's your prerogative.

As its a website, it would help.

Dwight C. said: The issue is, not everyone likes to blog or prattle on truthfully. A thumbs up is a lot different than a rating system. Just as everyone blogs or prattles on from their own perspective, so too with rating systems or "thumbs". It would depend on what the player giving the rating was looking for, and not all Players are valuing the same qualities in GM's. In fact it varies widely, what someone considers a "good GM". Imagine this scenario: Say you're a GM who runs a Roleplay heavy campaign. Perhaps you even stated in a prattling blog "This will be a RP heavy game". Then a Player chooses to join your game, and they don't like RP, they wanted heavy combat. So they go and give this GM a "thumbs down". Now people who actually would have liked the RP, are seeing a bad rating for a GM who hasn't done anything wrong --- a GM who has volunteered their time here, and offered their game, and yet someone is slamming them with thumbs-down just because it turned out to not be the kind of game that particular Player was looking for. You wouldn't be a bad GM for the RP players, you would just look bad on the rating system, depending on who had bothered to vote. Even worse, someone with a vendetta can start logging in different names and voting a GM thumbs down just because they can. This is why I think that words, descriptions, sentences, blog, prattling, or just dialog where the Player and GM interview each other, is far superior to a simple Up and Down rating system.

Yeah, I agree with Gold. You could try to address some concerns (only let players that had played in a game with the GM express a view, tie expressed views to a specific campaign, etc), but in the end you'll just end up with a raw number that has no real meaning other than the number of people that have played with a GM and cared enough either way to voice an opinion. However, what I would like to see along similar lines is a system that grants more authority to accounts based on their actions, similar to the way that StackOverflow and it's ilk do. Experience certainly doesn't equate to trustworthiness, but I think they have a pretty good balanced system for handling positive/negative feedback. Similarly, rather than rating GMs, it would be better to rate their campaigns, or specifically, qualities they claim to have. Having a GM with 7 campaigns, with several hundred hours spread across them, and with traits like Battle Heavy, or Role Play Heavy, or House Rules, and a ratio of (# Agree/# Players) would certainly tell you much much more than a simple GM 23 up / 20 down.

I have been a witness to a community where the player accounts are not well policed. Vendettas can become rampant. Or someone shooting for Best GM on the site will "run" a game for himself, plus sockpuppets, that then vote him, best, over and over. Not that it matters in the real world, but if that kind of activity goes on, how can you accept any sort of "Assessment" of a GM's skill from a system that allows that to happen? Finding a good game is a combination of a good team, and a good relationship. If you want to assess who someone is, talk to them, join their game, and then see how you feel about it three sessions later, like dating. If a GM is rated as "Bad", and then people see that, nobody joins their game, right? Because if you have bad and mediocre, and good, then good gets the hits and it's a popularity contest. So then you not only have the Good GMs swamped with applicants who can never be accepted, because all they are looking for is 4 or 5 people, then you have rated "Bad" gms who are stigmatized, and nobody wants to play with them as GM, and thus they never get better, because becoming a good one is a learned skill. So, that as a result also INCREASES the player to GM ratio which is already a huge problem here. Yeah, it's no fun looking for a group. It takes time. maybe days, or months. Many people want it to be easy to find a good person to marry, too. Sure you can find a one shot game. You don't have to "Marry in to" someone's campaign to play it and have fun. But you'll never know who they really are until you play with them a while, and even then, there could be all sorts of subterfuge, or it just.. works. like the real non gaming world. All of this rating, and assessing and judging is all relative, as has been said. Games I like are going to be different from some one else's. For me, I always felt it better to do the work, and find the people by applying. It gives me experience as a player, it gives the GM experience as a GM, and more games get run, rather than trying to be "Safe Bet".

I feel that some kind of "review" option might be useful for GMs and Players but it would have to be text only so no score of any kind (thumps up or down is a score). This way the "review" would contain the information (was it liked/disliked, why, etc.) and the reader would make the call whether that review was helpful for her/him. For example if someone would write a review saying: Really bad/good! Most would probably just ignore it since it wasn't really that informative compared to a situation where someone sees the trouble of writing 500 words long review from which all the reasons why are clearly explained. The review should also clearly show who wrote it and when and the reviews should be in counter cronological order (newest on top) so the most fresh knowledge would be presented first (a review from 2 years ago might not tell anything about the person anymore). Just my 2 cents.

So something along the lines of a review on amazon? "Was this GM review helpful to you? yes/no" Maybe a system like LinkedIn's recommendations. That way you only get positive feedback, and the GM is in control of what he wants to show. Those recommendations can be tied back to the recommender, and only show if that player has played with the other player as a GM, and only if some minimum threshold of play time has elapsed, like 20 hours and/or some minimum number of forum posts, or some other metric to try and assure they are a real person and not just the GM...

I'm against rating system in any form. Too much ambiguity and room for abuse.

I never said anything about giving thumbs down. Just a thumbs up to someone saying they are a GM that enjoys to run a "role Playing Intensive game" or a GM that uses "house rules". Its not a rating system, it is more like what Aaron said. Confirmation that this GM runs a game like "X".

That's better, but -- what if the GM runs several different kinds of games & different styles? You're really rating the game or the game session, not strictly attached to the GM in all cases. If I run a game of "FATE" it's going to be roleplay heavy and story based, that's the game. The suggestion of just rating the characteristics of the game (such as "Roleplay heavy") would be ok applied to a single campaign or a game itself, but makes less sense (to me) for GM's who are people, who change & often may run different styles of games.

there could be a "checkmark" system for each game including version, style of running it(ie book rules only, modded rules, secondary books used, etc etc). All these choices would be able to be picked so that sometimes they may run modded, sometimes, Role play intensive, etc.

+1

Dwight, Who would control these checkmarks? The individual DM? or players who have played with said DM? If the DM - why need checkmarks at all? Most DMs in their campaign writeups are fairly specific about how they run and what they run. How much information does a checkmark give you? What is your definition of "role play intensive" versus my definition of "role play intensive"? If the campaign writeup is lacking, you as a player can ask the DM what style of game he/she runs. If players - what if the DM only runs 1 campaign at a time for a limited number of people. These players might not rate the DM. So this DM would then get no recommendations or thumbs up or whatever... In other words, the absence of positive feedback is negative. Folks might steer clear of a non-rated GM then. In Aaron's system, likewise, what is the point of a review system where the GM being reviewed controls which reviews are visible? I choose to show just the positive reviews. I look like a GM god. But poor Sam doesn't have ANY reviews to show because his players either a.) Don't like him or b.) are too lazy to leave good feeback. So we go back to the situation where folks would potentially avoid playing with Sam because he's not rated/reviewed. This idea is a bad idea. What works and what works well is DMs and players communicating before sessions to layout expectations and such. This way, if a player decides they don't like DM Paul's style, they can go find another DM. If you run across a lousy GM - well, find a new one. I know getting into games can be tough and I've run across a couple GMs I will not play with ever again. But there are others that enjoy playing with those DMs and in those types of games. So... If this were a democracy and the Devs were taking a vote on this - my vote would be a solid NO.

Paul S., the point of the GM choosing to show or hide reviews would be to prevent griefing from a player that just didn't get along with them. In generally, I agree that it would be better to just have players and GMs communicate with one another to determine compatibility rather than have a poorly conceived "popularity game" rating system for GMs. My response was attempting to illustrate that a simple system cannot possibly convey a useful degree of information. I think it IS possible to create a solution that would give players a good idea of what a GM is like, but it will be very complicated to setup, and require lots of work on the part of the devs. And for that matter, I'd rather they work on other things. =D

I try to avoid just saying "+1" but I'd just like to add my agreement to what Aaron is saying. If it was to work in any fashion whatsoever it would be a GM-approved review (anything less is simply unhelpful as a metric in this context), but there are many, many more things I'd rather see come to pass before a single second was spent on this feature. If you meet a good GM, for you, great. If you meet a GM who doesn't mesh well with your tastes,I'd suggest you just move along and make room for someone better suited to that group.

@Aaron - gotcha. Misunderstood your post.

Paul S. said: W ho would control these checkmarks? The individual DM? or players who have played with said DM? etc I would say it would be only those whom have played with the GM can give a checkmark while the GM picks the category of the item to be checked. Most GMs could ask their players to check the items picked by the GM. I view it differently when I wouldn't see a checkmark beside the item. I would see it more as the player not caring to mark something. I keep seeing people calling it a rating system or review. My intentions were not for a rating system, but for peeps to see some things that could help them determine if the game is something they would want to pursue with the GM. If a GM is always about Combat, and he says he it thru the category chosen, then those expecting a Role-Play intensive game would not pursue it. I can give this one example, the game im playing in right now on Roll20, the GM told me and all the others he likes to run an RP extensive game. We changed it up on him and started combat very early on, starting a fight. He still did the combat in a RP style. We still had the dice roles and he still explained and ran the combat with role play at its core. He stuck to his guns, even in the first session that was almost all combat, to an RP extensive game. I as the player, would like to give him the thumbs up for doing this.

I think a very well written GM questionaire would be the best solution. Ask really excellent questions, or pose situations, and let the GM show how they would handle it. If the questionaire is good at it's job, I think GMs would post it voluntarily, just because it is useful for both sides to have a good match. This is a good way to get the information you want, not offend anyone, and give people a way to "see" a GM's style, or method of operation.

write it up man!!!

This is an odd idea. GMs put a good amount of effort into building and crafting their campaigns. When you put forth your application, you're not just answering the GM's questions, but you put forth your own as well just to ensure you two 'mesh'. I personally interview applicants that put time into their applications and I can quickly find those I can and can't work with based off my style of GMing. What i'm reading here is akin to 'Players have more power than the GM' The actual thing here is 'you're there at the pleasure of the GM because you enjoy their campaign.' It's not a buyer-seller relationship, this is a mutual trust relationship, and player churn is a far greater problem than 'GM quality'. This isn't a product you're buying, especially when these stories, and adventures are hand crafted by the GM's free time for enjoyment of both player and GM . If you as a player insist on a particular style of play which the GM is uncomfortable with and you then churn and start to rate down/up that GM, how is that fair? It's more you had an expectation rather than asking and working with the GM since this is their world after all .

Additionally there will be a number of GM's that never bother to fill out the questionnaire.