Is this original? Is this relevant?

Good question(s)!

I’m (well, was till I decided to stop a year ago) a regular d&dtube, pathtube and overall ttrpgtube viewer (you’re my hero, Deficient!), and I’m subscribed to D&D and Pathfinder2E subreddits, but haven’t seen this topic being broadly discussed, so I decided to put in my 2 cents on the problem of GM agency (weird, I know).

Also please note, that I have a perspective of a D&D/PF2E player and GM, so, even though I have a rough idea of what SWADE, Call of Cthulhu and VtM are, I know nothing of things like Fate Core and many many others.

Who is it for?

It’s for GMs.

Well, even if you’re a player, I can’t stop you from reading it, but enforcing this behavior on your GM is not a good idea (trust me, I’m a GM).
But if you’re a “never-GM” player – try being a GM for once, it’s fun (and absolutely not frustrating)!

Ok, let’s start with something already

Ask ChatGPT or Deepseek for a TL;DR, or even generate a video with one of your favorite talking head D&Dtubers – I don’t care, I’m not a “-tuber”.

So.
What is this about?

It’s about rethinking your role as a GM.
It’s not about prep, no, get as much of it as you can if you want to.
It’s about that weird (and nowdays rare for me) occation when you have 4-5 people at the table or behind the screen waiting for you to roll out the carpet of a fictional world for their fictional characters, a.k.a. “the gaming session”.

Here’s an ad if you’re still not sure:

Ever thought about fudging the dice?
Or, maybe, you've not decided on 'sandbox vs railroad'?
Feel like you're losing control of your carefully crafted adventure?
Feel struggling and burdened to run the game?

I have answers for you right here and right now!

(I’m trying to be funny here, hehe)

The two sides of the flip-mat

Now, before I go further with my explanation, we (well, I’m here alone in my bed failed to go asleep and being bored, so “we” is a broad statement here) need to settle on one thing here.

In a typicall D&D-esque game there’re basically two modes: “play mode” and “story mode”.

“Play mode” is a game situation when both you and your players affect the world: either through direct manipulation (you being a GM just tell what’s going on) or through requests (both you and your players plan an action, roll the die or dice and check the result).

“Story mode” is when only the GM has a right to say what happens and players are not allowed to give any input (something like a dramatic intro for example).

Is there something in between, you might wonder? No, there’s nothing, because you either allow your players (well, actually, their characters) to do things or you don’t.
It is possible to think of a “middleground” situation, but it’d be detrimental to the subject of this post.
So, no, nothing in between, no “middleground”. It’s just one or the other.

Let’s talk “story mode” first

Because it’s simple.

Since your players can do nothing, there’s nothing to control. It’s just you and your ego pre-determined plot.

You just tell things, you roll nothing (questionable, but bear with me please), you fight nothing, you argue nothing (well, unless your players are a bunch of ungrateful freaks ex-GMs disrespectful selfish gamedestroyers not used to playing TTRPGs) – you just tell what happens, like you’re writing a book.

Yes, I know, these interludes still depend on what your players did during this session (or even during your entire campaign), but at the very moment you have the absolute power of what happens.
No “I use stealth!”, no “I want to roll for perception” – your players are numb, their characters are out of their control, and you’re the alpha and omega.

A cutscene, if you wish.

Do you need to roll your player-crushing 10-inch GM-only d20? No.
Can you? Yes, if you want to lose (if only just for a moment) your absolute control. But even then you’re the one to absolutely decide whether you want it or not.

There’s no rule to govern you or your players, no justice upon your plot-unveiling tricks.

But if you want to be in such control all the time, why not just write a book?

And now the “play mode”

That’s what this is about. What you and your players (hopefully) came here for.

A collaborative chance-based storytelling.

At this point, your players control their characters, and you control everything but your player’s characters.

Let’s go purely (meta-)mechanical for now.

What is the only tool your players can use to affect the world through their characters?
They can put a request for their character to do something, then (not all the time, but still) they throw the dice under the table and look for it for the next 10 minutes and determine (with your guidance) what is the outcome of their request.
You may call it an indirect manipulation.

Now, what do you do then?
You come up with the reaction your universe answers with to this manipulation. It may be a goblin swinging his sword, a giant rock falling down, a young pretty lady telling she won’t share the bed, a skeleton being finally demolished.

So, unlike “story mode”, players now have a say to plunder and impregnate. Although indirectly (through their dice), but still.
You’re no longer alone in building the plot, and that’s awesome (and absolutely not frustrating)!

“play mode”, but different

Now, what if you as a GM embrace what your players have no choice of?
What if you only interact with your world indirectly?
That sounds insane, I know, but let me explain.

Usually, when a rock falls, it does so, because you told it to.
When a wave consumes every PC, it does so, because you told it to.

But… what if all of this could be done indirectly? Like your players do all the time?
What if everything happens not because you told it to, but because that’s what the stones of chance decided is the outcome of your request?
What if you play your world instead of governing it?

Doing so allows you to experience your own world, and not only you get the joy your players have all the time, but also moves everyone at the table into the same league!
What a wonder!

And now, to the ad questions:
You don’t need to fudge the dice – you’re no longer responsible for the outcome.
You don’t have to “sandbox” stuff – it does so on it’s own (by leveraging the “indirect control”).
You have no way to lose control – you’re no Teddy Swims can’t lose what you don’t have.
And you’re not burdened with running the game – because you play it.

Yes, you’d have an urge to go and “take it all under your deliberate control” – don’t.
Don’t spoil your fun. Don’t spoil your players’ fun.

Now, this sort of gameplay requires (somewhat) to have a rules-heavy system, so you can lean back and watch the rules do the governing while you play the game like the rest of the table. I heard Fate guys have a remedy for that.

And yes, at some point you’d have to still go and decide stuff, but you can leave that to when it is absolutely necessary, and not all the time.

What of preparation then?

That’s a bit hard, yes, because to allow yourself to play the game with your players you basically have to have everything prepared for a full sandbox – even if you’re running a completely railroad adventure.
Or just be good at improvising.

But, at the same time, you can make it simpler by carefully interchanging “play mode” and “story mode”.
Remember, neither you nor your players have any “input” to what should happen to the world in “story mode” – you just tell what happens.

A small note on writing a book

A good friend of mine told me that even renowned and experienced authors lose control of their worlds soon after book publication – and I don’t mean legal stuff, but rather shifting a perspective from the demiurge of the world to a humble beholder (not that one, you nerd).

Sometimes that could happen before one finishes the book. What an emocional wreck!

But we (GMs) have the power to freely go from one position to the other at will.
Shouldn’t we abuse it as much as possible?

BTW, the same could be applied to team management at work, but that’s a whole other story.