And here we come to the end, the final article in the Earning Their Trust series (see parts one and two, respectively.) This is the last planned entry into the series, but like nearly every one-shot I’ve ever planned to run “in a single evening, I swear” the series might go over.

That’s future Josh’s problem to worry about, though. Today, I want to tackle the idea of the GM as the blind arbiter of the rules, and how taking on that role can impact the trust your players have in you and your game.

This is Not a Perfect World

In a perfect world, every rule of every RPG system would be clear and unambiguous. The game developers would know exactly what they wanted to communicate and would do so with precision and in such a way as to be completely obvious when read by the players the very first time.

Alas, we live in a world where even the roundness of our planet is (somehow) debated, and the languages we use to relay rules are about as precise as a clutch of ferrets writhing inside a trench coat.

To that end, I would say that as a GM, there is no way you can be a completely objective judge of the rules and the system. After all, how can you be expected to make objective decisions when the rules themselves are not objective?

Game developers do not write rules systems to create a perfectly fair simulation of a (made-up) reality. They write them to create a very particular kind of experience.

D&D simulates traveling through dungeons and beating up monsters with your friends. Call of Cthulhu simulates investigating cosmic horrors and slowly (or not so slowly) losing control of your mental faculties…with your friends. Pasión de las Pasiones simulates over-the-top extra dramatic soap operas. With your friends.

 Isn’t “I’m just following the rules” the GM’s version of “I’m just doing what my character would do?” 

The point is that in order to simulate these experiences, the rules, as they’re written, cannot be objective. They have to prefer the desired experience. And so, as a GM, you can’t be objective either. I would argue, in fact, that you shouldn’t be, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

The other part of the simulation I want to call out is the part where you do all of these things with your friends. Unless we’re talking about solo RPGs or journaling games, TTRPGs are social games. And your friends, I’m guessing, want to play a game with their friend too. Not a passionless judge beholden to the rules as written. If that were the case, you could all just play Baldur’s Gate 3 again.

Punitive Parent VS “Cool Mom” GM

The problem with viewing the GM as the impartial arbiter is that the GM creates the situations and scenarios the players have to overcome to begin with. They can’t be an unbiased judge because there’s no third party in this equation. There’s the players, and there’s the GM. There’s an inherent power imbalance if the person who put them in the situations is also in charge of making the rulings about those situations.

Now, you might try to ignore the reality of that imbalance and think to yourself, “This doesn’t apply to me. I’m able to remove my emotional connection to the campaign scenarios I spent hours creating and make fair and balanced rulings.” But I promise you, at some point – despite your best intentions – there will come a day when you have to say to your players, “I’m sorry it went that way for you, but I’m just following the rules.”

And really, isn’t “I’m just following the rules” the GM’s version of “I’m just doing what my character would do?”

Of course, on the flip side of that, you’ve got what I call the “Cool Mom GM.” You know, the one who’s not like all those other GMs. They let you take sips of their wine and give you magical artifact weapons when you’re still level two. They also never let anything bad happen to their players, regardless of what the rules say. This play style might be fun for a little while, but eventually, players will get bored if all they do is – as DJ Khaled says – win, win, win, no matter what.

So where does that leave us? Well, following the rules you set out at the start of a game – including your choice of systems, the house rules of your table, and the boundaries set forth in session zero – will, without a doubt, help you earn your players’ trust, but knowing how and when to break the rules will help you keep it.

Let’s look at how to do that.

Bringing Balance to the Force

How do you use the rules in a fair but biased way? You lean into the experience. Like I said above, TTRPG rules aren’t written to be reality simulators. They’re written to be experience simulators. In other words, you’ve got to use the – dare I say it – spirit of the rule, not the letter.

What does that look like? Well, let’s take an example from Pathfinder 2nd Edition (pre-remaster). There was a lot of debate over the wording in the death and dying subsystem about when and how the wounded condition was applied.

The rules could be read one of two ways, and depending on how they were read, the system was a lot more or a lot less deadly.

So, how do you use the experience simulation to make your ruling? Ask yourself the kind of Pathfinder game you’re running. Is your campaign a high adventure with lots of swashed buckles and feats of derring-do? Rule for the more lenient interpretation.

If, on the other hand, you’re going for a gritty campaign where the threat of death is omnipresent. Well, the choice is simple.

Not every ruling you make will be this clear cut, but if the experience – not the RAW – is your guiding light, then you’ll be able to navigate the turbulent seas. And, if you do this with consideration to your players’ characters and the stories they’re building (see the first and second parts in this series), then you’re going to solidify the trust you’ve been building up the whole campaign.

In Conclusion, Your Honor

When it comes right down to it, it’s all about showing your players that you’re working with them to interpret the rules of your game, not against them. That doesn’t mean saying yes to everything they ask for or assuming that their interpretation is correct and yours is wrong. It means knowing when a rule interpretation benefits the story you’re building. Together.

I think you’ll find, when everyone at the table has trust in each other, those stories are going to be freakin’ epic.