“What name hast thou
That ridest here so blindly and so hard?"
"No name, no name,” he shouted, “a scourge am I
To lash the treasons of the Table Round."
"Yea, but thy name?”Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Pelleas and Ettarre
By which I mean, the “GM” - but saying that somewhat prejudices the answer.
I’m not entirely sure where I’m landing on this point, to be clear. I’ve loosely picked one as a working name but this is still open to revisiting.
Game Master1
By far the default term, common across many rpgs since the earliest days. Abbreviated and usually just named as “GM”, it’s simple and gets the point across without any particular theming. It’s also what I first called the role2.
There’s certainly an argument it’s overly generic or that it can evoke too much of an idea of distinction or responsibility on the GM above the other players, rather than as another player3 - but it’s hard to argue with convention4.
Dungeon Master
Also very commonly known, since it’s D&D’s term - though this has made other rpgs shy away from using it exactly (hence GM being more popular). I have no nostalgia/muscle-memory of this name and this isn’t a game about dungeons. We can ignore this possibility.
Master of Ceremonies
Another term that’s somewhat common - as are referee and storyteller or even chronicler (which starts to have some thematic resonance with the setting). For some these names may come as more natural.
Game Moderator
Cortex Prime keeps the “GM” abbreviation, but gives it a different emphasis. This is a very sensible name, I think, while not really shaking the boat.
Game manager also sometimes gets used, with similar purpose.
Game Makar
Going into wilder territory, makars are a term for scots poets - giving a thematic twist to the abbreviation.
The glaring problem is this definitely looks like “Maker”5. In fact, it descends from that word - as in, a poet is a “maker” of poetry. When constructed as “Game Maker” this sounds like it’s talking about the person designing the game or saying the GM is “making” the game happen - which seems the same issues in “Game Master”.
Bard
Dropping the need for the cute abbreviation, there’s a pretty obvious thematic choice. This is the era of the Celtic bard and as we’re emulating the various tellings of Arthurian legend, framing the game as a poem being told6 makes a lot of sense.
But we should be wary of picking terms just for the sake of having our own terms - and bard has another problem: we don’t want to get stuck in a situation where it’s hard to tell if we’re talking about a bard (character in the world) or the bard7 (player).
Bardd
The Welsh8 term is technically separate, allowing us to use the English translation in-story (the same way we use the normal English terms for, say, a horse or a boy, instead of native Brythonic terms), while being close enough that people recognize the tie without a long digression into etymology.
But it maybe just makes the term more awkward to use.
Ovate
Another term associated with the bardic tradition, short, easy to pronounce, but rare enough it probably won’t come up confusing in-game and out of game people. It does lose some of its coolness by being a Latinate form (Vatis starts to get into the obscure territory again - and *wātis is definitely too far).
Ragemon (le bon)
In far too deep a cut, there’s a medieval game (somewhat) like an rpg utilizing a series of players regulated by a roll of verses called Rageman’s Roll…
Taliesin
Another direction to take would be to pick a specific voice - one specific bard - and frame that the story is literally being told by them. The most obvious pick here is Taliesin.
This framing again requires more buy-in to the framing, and is no longer as easy to say (or to fit into rules descriptions as a job-descriptor9).
Chretien, etc.
In a similar direction, you could see this as being told by a specific member of the later writers, such as Geoffrey of Monmouth, Chretien, Sir Thomas Malory, Alfred Lord Tennyson, “Anonymous”, etc.
You could even have the choice of writer flag the tone or other techniques to be used - a mechanic used in Monty Python’s Curricular Mediaeval Reenactment Programme… but this starts to veer into it’s own new interpretation of the game10. Also, none of these are simple terms to fit into the rules descriptions (meaning we’d still need a term for the role these characters were used in).
Footnotes
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Or gamemaster as one word. I’ve seen both. ↩
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Since I started in Pathfinder, which uses that term, instead of D&D’s DM (Dungeon Master). ↩
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Because, to be clear, they are a player. They also need to have fun, the table as a whole needs to accept decisions made, etc. - the GM doesn’t have a special role above the game. ↩
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I don’t even try to reinvent NPC and PC for instance. ↩
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The pronunciation is somewhat different, but how much are people going to remember that from some sidenote? ↩
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And a history being recited, a law being rightly ordered - the position of the bard overlapping all these points makes them very evocative. It’s a much clearer tie to the roots of the legend and to the GM’s role than, say, “Minstrel” or “Troubadour” would be. ↩
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The game’s centered on an Old Brythonic speaking people, but Welsh is often our most obvious living relative and its oral tradition has many of the oldest references. Breton and Cornish sometimes may also be close, or there may be some old Cumbric term we know - and sometimes an Irish or Scottish term will just fit well enough we’ll run with it - but Welsh often wins out in feeling most authentic-ish when the different languages drift in different ways. This is what’s disqualifying the somewhat known Filid from being a contender. We’re also avoiding the obviously Old English/Germanic term skald. ↩
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You have to start getting into awkward formulations like “the player who is taking the role of Taliesin” instead of just “the GM”. ↩
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And one which is - fittingly for its original place, but less so here - a fairly silly interpretation. ↩