Greetings, programs! I'm using factor analysis to find a scientific answer to the question, "What kinds of GM styles are there?"
You're going to answer 43 questions about your GM style. All of the questions have answers ranging from "strongly X" to "strongly Y". If you're neutral, strongly ambivalent, prefer a balance between the two options, or wish there were a third answer, click the middle option. If the question doesn't apply to you at all, skip it.
Once all the data's in, I'll run the numbers and work out which questions have a lot of correlation with each other, so that GM style can be reduced to a few key factors. Those factors will be our most scientific answer to our research question. However, there's no such thing as objective science. Our questions were submitted by the MCDM community, so the final results will reflect the kinds of things the MCDM community thinks are important to ask about GM style, and the patterns of association in your responses. So if you want the factors we find to reflect who you are, please answer all the questions and send the survey to your friends.
Special thanks to Matthew Colville for coming up with this research question, and to our question designers, Geddy Lee, Tgnewman, Argent, and tidnabemit. This survey was designed by Viridian Grail.
Greetings, programs! With the MCDM community’s help, I’ve prepared a survey of GM styles, so that I can use factor analysis to find the common variables underlying GMs’ responses, and come up with a scientific answer to “what kinds of GM styles are there?” The survey has 43 questions and takes a few minutes to complete. The more people answer, the better the data we’ll get.
EDIT: We got 101 responses and now we’re analysing the data. First results: There are 9 dimensions of GM style! Not sure what they are, but there’s 9 of them.
Actually, I’ve been running the data, and it seems there’s a factor underlying when sessions end, whether joke characters are allowed, restrictions on character choice, comedy relief NPCs, and a focus on lore prep.
I guess I’ll post in this community when I’ve written up descriptions of all the dimensions.
But if you want to see how the sausage is made, we’ve been making it together in the MCDM discord server.
And I just named the last factor. So although I haven’t written descriptions of all the factors, I can tell you the acronym is STOPJADEN. Strategy, Tactics, Order, Prep, Jest, Authenticity, Direction, Equality, Narrative.
Actually, I’ve been running the data, and it seems there’s a factor underlying when sessions end, whether joke characters are allowed, restrictions on character choice, comedy relief NPCs, and a focus on lore prep.
Where are you going to announce results?
I guess I’ll post in this community when I’ve written up descriptions of all the dimensions.
But if you want to see how the sausage is made, we’ve been making it together in the MCDM discord server.
And I just named the last factor. So although I haven’t written descriptions of all the factors, I can tell you the acronym is STOPJADEN. Strategy, Tactics, Order, Prep, Jest, Authenticity, Direction, Equality, Narrative.