Brendan S Right, the reactive stance should be a default for a lot of the play, but that heavy hand needs to fall on occasion for most of the situational positioning.

It’s a really interesting role, and I never really saw a solid deconstruction of DMing behaviors geared towards plain and simple Fun Of The Group until the OSR started having conversations about it with regards to Agency and Engagement – it’s pretty telling that there’s been strong movements against DM fiating and the DM power role (Mother May I, etc) given just how… not articulated or examined the dynamic ever was, originally (well, that’s not true, there’s some strong stuff in Gygax’s DMG, but it’s a little obfuscated and layered); leading to DMing styles all over the map.

That leap from Wargaming Rulings Judge to World Explainer & Articulator to, eventually for many: heavy-handed Story Shaper was a crazily organic evolution, and not to every style’s benefit. And the OSR rolling back that clock and using “Judge” and “Referee” language was an interesting epiphany to me, having filled so many notebooks with  authorial campaign intentions