Everybody knows that a wargame doesn't require a Games Master. You grab a friend, you each put an army on the table, and you play. Nothing could be simpler or, for a busy roleplayer tired of trying to find the convergence of an available date and time across 5 people's schedules, more liberating. And yet the role of a Games Master keeps coming up in wargaming. A casual mention here, a note there, wargames know that Game Masters exist, and I think a substantial contingency of wargame authors understand that in many cases a Games Master emerges. What's interesting to me is how the role is largely left undefined, but maybe that's because in real life the Games Master is more informal than many roleplaying games suggest. Or maybe a Games Master for a wargame and for a roleplaying game are actually 2 distinct roles that happen to share a name.
In the early 2020s, as Wizards of the Coast (WotC) floundered to find a way to make yet more money on their wildly successful gaming system and announced that the world was suddenly suffering from a shortage of Game Masters. The problem, they claimed, was especially dire because Game Masters were (WotC claimed) the only people buying their books, and if the company couldn't sell books then the company executives wouldn't make as much money as they wanted to make. It was a manufactured crisis that arose only because instead of 1 billion dollars, WotC wanted some undefined value of more billion dollars. It's demonstrably possible for a smaller team of individuals to produce quality gaming material, so the illusion that roleplaying games are irreparably divided between income from players and income from elusive Game Master cryptids is pretty weak.
In most roleplaying games, the Dungeon Master or Game Master is the designated individual who invents or reads the adventure scenario, and then presents the elements of the adventure to other players during the game. In theory, any player can be Game Master. In practise, one player in a gaming group adopts the role, and then never relinquishes it (or possibly is never relieved of it).
Ignoring what forces influence who gets the role of Game Master, modern roleplaying games seem to have settled on the idea that some people are Game Masters, and others are "just players". Game books have been marketed with that in mind. There are books for players, and there books only for the Game Master.
The function of the Game Master isn't very clear in most wargames. Within my regular gaming groups, my role as Games Master in wargames evolved from me being Games Master for our roleplaying games. Of course I'd get to tell everyone else what's happening in the world of 40k (or whatever setting we're playing in), because I'm always the one saying what's happening in the world. It's a communal habit.
With other people, I'm Games Master only in the sense that I'm the one introducing and demonstrating the game to a new player.
And with yet other players, I'm the actual Games Master, because I'm running a campaign with a scripted storyline.
Maybe that's how the role has evolved in wargaming itself. I don't know how other people play, so I have no concept of how common a Games Master is in a wargame like 40k, or even how the role of Games Master is defined. It's a surprisingly variable term in wargaming, and in a way I think that's been beneficial to the hobby. I've never seen a wargame book marketed just to a Games Master, the way you see RPG books marketed. A wargame book is a wargame book. If you want to play the game, you buy and read the book, whether you play as a Games Master or not.
I don't think there's a single definition of what a Game Master is in practise. I think it's a bigger and more complex term than we give credit.
I don't think a Games Master is a unique state of being. I think it's a role people adopt for many different reasons, and it's not always a role people retain all the time. There's a common Internet trope that insists that some people are "stuck" being Games Master for life because everyone else (the scope of "everyone" is usually left undefined) refuses to fill that role. In my experience, this isn't true. But the Internet seems to think so, and I suppose the trope wouldn't exist were there no truth to it. Maybe it depends on the size and breadth of your social group.
How do you know when you're a Games Master? This is one way that roleplaying games and wargames converge. If you're an RPG player, you might be tempted to think you're a Game Master if you own a copy of a special Game Mastery Guide or a Dungeon Master's Guide. But actually, owning those books is a symptom, not the cause, of your condition. Were you not a Games Master, then you would not own those books. Similarly in wargaming, you wouldn't invent a campaign for other players, or build an elaborate battlefield with hidden story elements scattered throughout, or write your own missions, but for being a Games Master.
In other words, if you suspect you might be a Games Master, then it's probably too late. You're a Games Master, regardless of whether it's for a roleplaying game, a wargame, or both.
Header image by Seth Kenlon, licensed as Creative Commons cc0.