The gamemaster role

The gamemaster (GM) is the person who hosts a game. Players just need a code and a phone; the GM is the one who picks the game, lays it out on a real map, and runs the session everyone else joins.

You don’t need to be technical to be a gamemaster. You do need to be on the web console (the GM app in a browser) — hosting is a desktop/laptop job, playing is a phone job.

What a gamemaster does

1. Picks a game from the catalog.
2. Creates a session, which mints a four-letter join code to share.
3. Places the map — drags the game’s zones onto a real-world location.
4. (Optional) Adds bots and items and tunes settings like bot speed.
5. Starts the game once players are in and the map is ready.
6. Spectates and manages — watches everyone live, uses chat, pauses or ends.

The next pages walk through each of these in order. If you just want the end-to-end happy path, go straight to Run a session.

The web console

The GM console is a browser app (the marketing site’s Start playing / GM Console button leads here). It gives you:

• a game library of available games,
• a map for placing zones, points, and decorations onto the real world,
• panels for bots, items, and tunables,
• a live spectator view of the running session — every player’s position, items, and the event log, unfiltered (the GM sees everything), and
• session controls: start, pause, resume, stop, end.

GM vs. player, at a glance

	Gamemaster	Player
Device	Browser (laptop/desktop)	Phone app
Joins with	Creates the session	The four-letter code
Sees	Everything, unfiltered	What the game’s visibility rules allow
Moves on the map	No (hosts/observes)	Yes (their real GPS)
Needs sign-in	Yes (in production)	No

Note

A session can include bots, so you can demo or test a game with few or even no human players. See Bots, items, and tunables.

Authentication

In production, hosting requires signing in (the engine supports Google sign-in and magic-link email). In local development the engine can run in a bypass mode with no sign-in. Players never sign in — they only ever need a code.

Ready? Run a session →