The Games Master is the essential crux of just about any conventional role-playing game. Even the new-wave, touchy-feely, GMless games aren't actually GMless, they just require everyone to be the GM all at once. The role of the Games Master - or the expected role at any rate - has changed over the years from the all-powerful gaming demigod and despot of the old days to a more nuanced and cooperative, less oppositional role in more modern role-playing games.

You can describe the role of the Games Master in many ways but none of them are quite accurate and the real thing is a combination of these factors in various different proportions:

• The narrator of a story.
• The referee of the game.
• The banker in monopoly.
• Official interpreter and applier of the rules.

Individually none of these are particularly true but taken as a collective whole they do - somewhat - describe the role of the Games Master. Perhaps the best way to think of the Games Master is to describe them as a 'Facilitator' which, while sounding like corporate weasel-speak is probably the closest to the truth. The Games Master's role, more than anything else, is to try and make sure that everyone at the table - including themselves - has fun. They do this by coming up with good and engaging plots, engaging NPCs and giving the players a good level of challenge for their characters without things being either a complete pushover or a slaughterfest where everyone dies for no good reason.

I think this is the most up-to-date and most effective basis from which to approach being the Games Master of a game, the old-skool adversarial approach where you were actively out to 'get' the players doesn't really wash these days outside of board games such as Descent and the auteur style 'Storyteller' reduces the players to bit part roles in the Games Master's story, which - however good the story might be - isn't what an interactive game should be about.

To that end, I'll try and identify problems in Games Mastering and gaming from this perspective, where the Games Master's role is to provide the commodity of fun to both themselves and their play groups over all other concerns from fairness to proper application of the rules.

Here we are then...

The push got a grand total of 176 new followers spread across Twitter, Myspace, Facebook and Livejournal which is pretty healthy going I reckon! I'm now committed to producing a new edition of Neverwhere and commissioning some additional art (Raven, I'll be in touch soonish about that when I have a more definite plan for the book).

I'd like to keep this communication and rapport going between the people who've decided to follow me and who want to see the new edition come about. I want your suggestions - not that I'll necessarily use them - things you'd like to see, features of London that you think I missed, streets and stations that would make good features of London Below, maybe ideas from your own games that worked well. I've already slightly altered the title (see above) based on the negative feedback from the previous post, but try and make any comments a little more helpful and directing, eh? 'It sucks' doesn't much help me out.

The first thing I need to do, as I discussed, is to re-read and re-watch Neverwhere in its various original forms, book, TV Series and Graphic Novel as well as re-reading the old version of the game (something I've already done, wincing at the terrible presentation, something that will improve greatly I assure you.

I'll keep you all updated here on a regular basis, but I can't guarantee that being a daily occurance as it looks like I'm still going to have a lot of freelancing on my plate and I'll have to squeeze Neverwhere in around that.

Some initial thoughts I have are:

• Working The London Eye, The Millenium Dome and The Gherkin in, as well as any other developments in London that have come about since 1996 (ye gods I'm old) when the TV series first came along. This would include parts of the Jubilee Line Extension and the extensions of the Docklands Light Railway.
• Adding in some adventure seeds and expanding many of the A-Z entries.
• The system will remain largely the same, maybe a bit more finesse for the multiples/skill levels and better knack definitions. The major difference will be in (optional!) more codified consequences and working out negative adjectives and their implication. Basically I'm thinking that when you win a challenge you can dictate certain levels of outcome depending how much you beat the target by.

First things first though, reading! In depth reading at that!