In T13, during play (things work a little differently for Authors who don’t have to worry about Players running away from their Plots and trying to start their own), one of the Players takes the role of the Referee. The Referee has a number of special roles such as:
- Narration — The Referee usually begins the narration in T13. In Grunt and Hero games the Referee may do all of the narration in the game. Later in the game, or in more advanced games, other Characters may become Yarn-Tellers and then they will narrate parts (perhaps even most) of the game, even running their own side Plots or at least Subplots.
- Adjudicating Rules — Most of the reason the Referee is called the Referee is because they adjudicate any rules decisions (like deciding how Difficult something should be). The Referee always has final say over other Yarn-Tellers by the rights of GM Fiat, but their primary task should always to keep the game flowing and fun.
- NPC Actor — Often the Referee plays most of the Non-Player Characters (usually Extras), giving them voices and mannerisms to distinguish them from each other. Of course, each Yarn-Teller may narrate NPCs as well as their own Character, but the Referee is always available to add another NPC voice.
- Plot Interpreter — The Referee wrangles the Plots that are lurking behind the Scenes, Scenarios and Stories that unfold through play. Other Yarn-Tellers may manipulate Plots, but only the Referee can decide what happens when Yarn-Teller’s Plots interact.
- Author & Curate The Universe — Everything that is unique about the game universe (or local multiverse) in that corner of the Omniverse is the Referee’s to play with. The Referee is usually considered as an Author, who may literally draw up a map of the world, or the continent, or just the village that the game starts in, of course, sometimes a Ref wants to set a game in someone else’s universe (I have a few you can look over, they might at least give you a few ideas) perhaps something Lovecraftian or movie influenced? Referee’s like all Authors are free to plagiarise anything from other material, curate it into their game, although an author of a non-commercial game setting doesn’t have to worry about copyright as much as the Author of a Novel or Scriptwriter must, so they often don’t file off the serial numbers quite as hard.
- Banker / Croupier / Dealer — T13 uses both dice and cards in play, and perhaps poker chips as well. Usually Players make the rolls for their own Characters, but a good Ref should have dice available just in case. The Ref is responsible for the cards. They should shuffle, deal and keep the deck (although they may wish to assign those duties). The Referee should also have the chip piles nearby for handing to the Players.
- Make it Fun — This is absolutely the most important part of being the Referee, as the Ref has the hard job of managing everyone’s expectations, such as trying to work out how to handle the Narrative based Storylines, and Character-led narratives some of the players want play, against the ones who just want to kick down doors and slay monsters (BTW you can have and do both).
If you’ve never roleplayed before and haven’t been a Dungeon Master, Story-Teller or Games Master in some other game, then you should really take your time reading the rules, fully digest them, decide which one’s you think sound the most fun, and start with Lite or Grunt Characters.
You can think of T13 like a toolkit, slowly adding, or removing rules as your group style of play emerges. When a Rule says Optional, it really is Optional, you might be losing something by not using that Rule, but it might be something your group doesn’t like anyway. Although I would not recommend changing Rules out in the middle of an Ordeal, generally Rules changes should be done between sessions where necessary.