How to build the ultimate tool for every GM when every GM is different
“Listen to how cool my character is!”
If you’re familiar with that cliché, try asking a GM about a game they run. They won’t hold back—and at Bringing Fire, that’s exactly what we’re looking for.
In 7 Things We Learned by Interviewing 100 Game Masters, I wrote “...to build the best possible tools… we need to be describing GM archetypes at the TED Talk level.”
There are plenty of listicles about tabletop roleplaying player types—the rules lawyer, the metagamer, etc.—and even a few about game masters. But none provide the diligence and detail we need to build a comprehensive creative tool that’s truly designed “for every GM” out there.
Therein lies the challenge: How do you make something that’s suitable for the individual and everyone else, all at the same time?
Building the backstory: Qualitative research
First, we conducted research around GM traits and motivations. Our methodology consisted of formal interviews and countless conversations with game masters we meet at events, in forums, and in our day to day—which is a lot, since many of our friends are also GMs.
“Understanding why GMs do and don’t do things is critical—it helps us design Campaign Composer features in a way that’s intuitive to a GM’s process and easy on their level of effort.”
We started with a lay of the game-master landscape and the TTRPG hobby overall. My default assumption? GMs are a certain breed, and most are more or less like me. But things really got interesting when I started asking, “How are you unlike me?
Turns out GMs are as diverse as people come. Now, it’s up to us to take what makes them unique and apply it to a tool that works for all.
Character creation: Developing GM personas
These interviews have been the highlight of my time at Bringing Fire so far. Each and every GM lights up when they get the chance to share what they do behind the screen. If I could give that opportunity to every GM on the planet, I would. Sadly, that’s impossible.
This is where user personas come in handy.
In product design and marketing, “personas” represent different groups of similar people. We use them to personalize as much as possible when designing for large populations of people who we’ll never be able to meet.
Think of personas like character archetypes. In fact, they look an awful lot like character sheets in practice, reflecting beliefs, behaviors, proficiencies, pain points, and other similarities among different sets of people.
And I’m not the only one who sees the connection. At the first GenCon I ever went to, I attended a seminar by a GM who worked as a product manager. The topic? Using personas as a building block for the NPCs you create!
Like character creation, it’s actually really fun to generate personas. But to do that, we need to take stock of what we know and organize it: Enter the GM persona map.
Mapping it out: The GM persona map
The persona map is a model we use to distinguish traits and group similar ones together. We created it by analyzing our interviews and capturing all the ways that GMs can meaningfully differ. Voila:
Each point of differentiation is grouped into clusters at the end of every branch. Zooming in, you can see a few clusters describing GM responsibilities, gaming time, prep time, etc.
What GMs do and why—and what’s up with crafting?
This is just a sketch of our initial draft. Naturally, many aspects will coalesce into groups and subgroups. Eventually, we’ll organize them into a hierarchy to get more specific about how they apply any given GM. Right now, the bird’s eye view suggests that GM attributes are fundamentally split across 3 categories:
Who they are - Demographics and background
What they do - Observable information about activities, such as the number and type of tools they use
Why they do it - Intentional/internal qualities, such as a GM’s preferred emotional tone for campaigns
Say you spend an hour documenting the religious practices of your world. Is that for your own enjoyment? Do you feel obligated because one of your players is an evangelist cleric hoping to convert your townspeople? Or perhaps your players have come to expect that level of detail from you, and you don’t want to disappoint?
One idea that seems to span all 3 categories is crafting. It comes up in multiple areas across the model—a sure sign we need to explore further. It’s a rare GM who doesn’t spend time on immersion-enhancing props, be they maps, minis, playlists, artwork, or other handouts, digital or physical.
From sculpting 3D terrain and animating VTTs to painting minis and drawing characters, crafting is clearly a major part of GMing. Their crafts are many, and game masters need an integrated outlet to make them all shine.
Understanding why GMs do and don’t do things is critical—it helps us design Campaign Composer features in a way that’s intuitive to a GM’s process and easy on their level of effort.
All this requires further investigation, which brings us to our next step.
Enriching the model with quantitative research
Our interviews served as a basis for this model, giving us a sense of which topics to explore and what language to use as we move forward. But we can’t use the model to make any concrete decisions until we expand and validate it through specific, measurable quantitative research. It’s the only way to be sure we’re on the mark with Campaign Composer.
What does that look like? Instead of open-ended interviews and conversations, we’ll send out detailed surveys to a large population of GMs representing the gamut. Then we’ll statistically analyze them to find out exactly who, what, when, where, why, and how.
How the model comes alive
Once we have all our answers—our quantitative data—we’ll analyze them to make connections between GM attributes and discover meaningful insights. We’ll ask things like:
What aspects are like each other?
How can we organize them?
Can we make those piles bigger?
How are they related?
We can also “fit” GM profiles to the model to generate entirely new data points and dimensions each time. Those insights will tell us even more about the individual GM as well as the population as a whole.
And that’s how we’ll arrive at a set of very powerful clusters of traits and behaviors. Some clusters will be no-brainers. Others will doubtlessly surprise us.
One cluster might include crafty GMs with 6 years of experience who tend to spend hours painting minis but like to keep things light in their campaigns. Another might include GMs of first-edition tenure who cling to paper but want to bring in more digital references in a way that feels authentic to the hobby that defined their childhoods.
These clusters will one day become Russ, Saanvi, Terry, Catherine, and the rest of our user personas—who we’ll rely on to make Campaign Composer the creative engine we all want it to be.
To participate in our research, get in touch with us at info@bingingfire.com.