Anybody who has played a tabletop game is familiar with the idea of the Dungeon Master, the Game Master, who places enemies and items for the players.

I've been looking at DnD systems and the like lately, and got to thinking: One of the reasons Left 4 Dead is so popular is that it has a similar concept to a lot of Tabletop games: It's a group of players working with and against the Game Master (The Director in L4D's case).

The GM here is entirely computer controlled, but I personally would *love* a chance to play the Director. To actually play with 4 friends and be the one throwing the Boomers and Smokers and Zombie hordes at them.

Neverwinter Nights had a DM client which from what I've seen definitely has a following. Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption is another such game.

And there are a lot of people gathered around tables, clearly enjoying being playing the Dungeon Master of tabletops, and many players enjoying the unique experience that a computer alone cannot provide: The adaptability of a human being.

And some people do clearly enjoy playing the challenger instead of the challenged.

What if l4d had a "Director Mode"? What if they gave Diablo 3 a DM feature like NWNs? What if this was applied to other games? Why not let one of the players control the terrorists in a Rainbow Six game?

Do you think the ability to partially replace the computer with another person would benefit video games, or not?

Yeah I like the idea of DMs in games -- but you'd have to do the L4D thing of having an AI DM if you don't have a human one handy.

It sounds like you'd be interested in Sleep Is Death ;)

There was a zombie source mod (HL2 mod?) like L4D but a single human player directed the zombies and could 'spend' points on spawning different types of enemies or setting up traps. I never played it but it sounded like a cool idea.

I've got some 'dynamic mission editor' missions for Amra2, which kind of implement the DM concept -- one player has access to an editor interface during the game, and can spawn objects/enemies/waypoints/goals at any time during the mission. I've had some good fun with that making up missions for friends on the fly.

The cool thing about videogames is that I can play them whenever I want and I don't have to organize once a week gaming sessions that go on four five to six hours.

With NWN, I never ended up using the DM client because doing anything meaningful with that would involve organizing games in advance, having someone that knew NWN scripting, and a bunch of other things. A lot of people DID do that. I just didn't, because I didn't know anyone that had the game and really, as I said, I wanted to play it when I felt like playing it. I mean, I still don't play a lot of games online for that reason -- outside of FPSes, most of them have pretty poor drop-in-on-a-match style play and do require a degree of pre-organization.

Also I don't really think making computer games more like PnP games is a good idea.

Also relying on a DM would mean you have to rely on another gamer to control the action/narrative/whatever, and most gamers are absolutely horrible at that.

@MeshGearFox: well obviously making it a requirement for playing the game would be rather silly, you may as well just use MapTool at that point. I'm talking more about simply having it as another available option.

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Original post by MrMorley @MeshGearFox: well obviously making it a requirement for playing the game would be rather silly, you may as well just use MapTool at that point. I'm talking more about simply having it as another available option.

The idea sounds nice, but there're several issues which will make it unlikely, that this will be implemented atleast as AAA title in the near future.

One issue is, that you have to implement two games in one. It is not just playing a terrorist (this is pretty standard in every multiplyer fps shooter), as dungeonmaster the game feels more like a strategy game. To make it attractive to the gamemaster, you have to add some gameplay, not just a ingame editor.

Then there's the problem of balancing. You give one player the power to ruin the whole game. There're enough jerks around who love to ruin a game (i.e. teamkillers etc.). You would need too many rules to limit the power of the gamemaster (i.e. restrict the gamemaster to place all traps in a single row at a bottleneck of the level).

Then you have the issue with challange. If the gamemaster is too good or too bad, it has a strong impact on the game experience of the other players, either too boring or too hard.

There was once a space game (alliances ?) which incoperates different level of control (commander=strategy planning, other player=controlling space fighter). The commander was able to command their fleets consiting of player controlled fighters to attack certain areas etc., in theory a nice game concept, but the praxies shows,that many players weren't really interested in this kind of gameplay and were flying around and doing other things.

Never underestimate the creativity of players to do things which are not intented by the gamedesigner :)

Well I think this is a great idea that just isn't being looked at.

What you do is create a campaign world complete with monsters, dungeons, towns, landscapes etc... Imagine for example a virtual version of the Forgotten Realms D&D setting.

Then you have game instances where a GM can create monsters, NPC's, quests, items, and develop a story. The GM would have the power to modify the campaign world to his desires.

This would keep the game fresh for everyone and just like PnP games anything your character wanted to do would be possible. You could have complex political situations occur and have the PCs play a major part of it all.

You would of course have to find a GM that you liked, but you also could just find an instance that is accepting drop in players.

With this kind of game your character really couldn't be compared to other characters in the game who are not in your campaign instance. There wouldn't be a sense of competition across all the characters on the server like your typical MMORPG . In that sense a typical MMORPG player may not like the game at all. For example, Auction houses would be pointless since the entire game would hinge on what your GM wanted for the campaign.

Overall, I think this kind of game would be far more rewarding then your typical MMORPG. The actions of your character would have a notable impact on the game world and the GM could tailor the story to fit everyones character.

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Original post by 00Kevin Well I think this is a great idea that just isn't being looked at. What you do is create a campaign world complete with monsters, dungeons, towns, landscapes etc... Imagine for example a virtual version of the Forgotten Realms D&D setting.

Welcome to 2002. [grin].

NWN 1 & 2 both had many user-created Persistent Worlds which are more or less exactly as you describe. Definitely worth checking out.

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Original post by Sandman Quote: Original post by 00Kevin Well I think this is a great idea that just isn't being looked at. What you do is create a campaign world complete with monsters, dungeons, towns, landscapes etc... Imagine for example a virtual version of the Forgotten Realms D&D setting. Welcome to 2002. [grin]. NWN 1 & 2 both had many user-created Persistent Worlds which are more or less exactly as you describe. Definitely worth checking out.

Those Persistent worlds for NWN & NWN2 are completely different then what I am talking about.

Perhaps I should have been more clear, but the campaign world that I was talking about would not be player or GM created. It would be created by the game designers. GM's would simply login and modify their instance of the server in real time. There would be no offline toolset or a scripting system.

Basically take a game like wow, instance the world for the GM, remove all the quests, and allow a GM to add & control monsters, create quests, stories, and treasure.

It would also be cool if GMs could share modules that they created and fit them into their instance.

The problem is that the only people who'd want to play are people who know each other well, due to the near certainty of greifers otherwise.

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Original post by Storyyeller The problem is that the only people who'd want to play are people who know each other well, due to the near certainty of greifers otherwise.

So?

The only time I play Left 4 Dead is with people I know from an online community.