Poll: Warhammer 40K With A Game Master?!?

Games Workshop’s latest, Crusade of Fire, pitches the idea of playing Warhammer 40K with a game master. It’s probably the sanest choice to keep the wild scenario’s in Crusade of Fire manageable. But is it fun? Would you play Warhammer 40.000 with a game master? Would you enjoy it? Do you think it could be a viable way to play the game? I want to hear your opinion!

Warhammer 40K, Game Masters and Narrative Gaming

For a long, long (long, long) time, the 40K scene had a never-ending debate between two sides, which could be termed “competitive play” and “narrative place”. Warhammer 40K has both a lively tournament scene and a strong base of fans who are in it primarily for the stories and background.

Though both sides will probably continue to co-exist and continue to quarrel over the “true” way to play the game, Games Workshop’s 6th Edition seems to be leaning – by the words of its makers – to the narrative side than previous editions might have.

This is nowhere more clear, I feel, than in the Crusade of Fire campaign book. The book offers scenarios that are best played with three, not two players. One of them being the Game Master. It also features a short “How to game master” section.

The distinction to the “competitive mode” of playing 40K is felt most keenly, when GW associates a game master with throwing fairness – quote – “out of the window!”

Normally, when you play a game, the sides need to be balanced to make it fair. When there’s a game master, fairness goes out the window! We played a few games where the game master joined in one side or the other with an unexpected allied force, or turned up with a third army and tried to kill both the other players!

- Crusade of Fire, p. 13

Ok. I don’t agree with that.

But, it is probably true that the focus of having a match – as evenly balanced as possible – probably will take a backseat to other priorities if you play with a third person “gamemastering” your Warhammer 40K game.

Going by Crusade of Fire, these are the things a “gamemastered” Warhammer 40K game should (probably?) emphasize.

Game Master Changes #1 – Keep things unpredictable

The GM can decide on where everybody deploys, as well as set up all manner of tricks on the player such as booby-trapped sections or teleport relays.

- Crusade of Fire, p. 43

The Crusade of Fire missions are – more or less – all designed to continuously throw new complications at the players, turn after turn.

Playing with a game master only reinforces this. Especially, if there is no “third army”, and the Game Master becomes something like an ultimate version of Mysterious Terrain. Things go wild all over and one can never know what’ll happen when you move the troops.

It can be random crazy fun (a “serious” version of beerhammer?) or – probably the intention – embedded in a narrative that demands certain battlefield features or events to happen (e.g. starting turn 4, a meteor swarm goes down over the battlefield).

Beating the other player becomes less and exercise of countering his army and more a challenge to be on your toes for the next GM-calamity to hit.

Game Master Changes #2 – Three’s A Party

 In this scenario, Daemons manifest at the end of every turn as well – as they do, the game master can take control of them and use them as normal, taking his turn after both the players have taken their turns.

- Crusade of Fire, p. 89

Almost certainly, a “gamemastered” game of 40K is a solid option to play 40K with more than two player.

I have seen many attempts to make “40K work” for three-way games (or more). They never quite work as “competitive challenges”. And four-way games are usually just one-on-one games with more people pushing models.

A game master, I believe, can make that work. Not only because it is in itself a job for a third person, but because a Game Master is “in the game”, but pursuing different objectives than the “main players”. Or he might be orchestrating different objectives for the crowd if there are actually more than three players.

So. What is your take on Game Masters in Warhammer 40K?

Admittedly, the two, three pages on gamemastering in Crusade of Fire are a far cry from the game master guides you would find for pen-and-paper roleplaying games. There is, in theory, lots of room to expand on the idea.

But for a confrontational game like Warhammer 40K – which pitches players against each other – rather than the usual cooperative “us-vs.-the-world/plot” nature of roleplaying games, a game master still makes for a curious addition.

Would it be worth trying?

Have you tried Warhammer 40K with a game master?

Would you rather just go straight to playing a pen-and-paper roleplaying game instead?

In short, is Warhammer 40K with a game master a good idea?

Vote and share your opinion!

Z.