What is International GM’s Day?
While it might not be as well known as other holidays, International GM’s Day (also known as International Game Master’s Day) is an annual event that takes place every March 4th to celebrate the role of Game Master’s (including Dungeon Masters, Storytellers, Referees and Keepers) in the tabletop role-playing game community.
GMs of course, are considered a critical and often under-appreciated aspect of TTRPGs, given that they tend to be the ones who purchase the majority of game materials, organize sessions and spend significant time putting together adventures and campaigns.
How was International GM’s Day Started?
The event first began in December 2002 after a post was published on the forum of popular British-owned RPG website EN World (originally known as “Eric Noah’s Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News” site).
In the now popular post, a user named Spunkrat (later changed to Heathen72) wrote:
It’s clear from another thread I was reading that many GM’s out there don’t feel appreciated, and clearer still that many players don’t appreciate the amount of work their GM’s are putting into their games. So what I propose is GM’S DAY GM’s day is the day the gaming community would celebrate all the hard work our GM’s do for us. It would be like Mother’s day or Father’s day, and give us all the chance to pamper our GM. Maybe we could run a game for them as well!
In the forum discussion, the date of March 4th was chosen, which coincidentally, would later mark the anniversary of the death of Dungeons & Dragons co-creator Gary Gygax. The idea of International Game Master’s Day was later championed by a number of individuals within the TTRPG community, including Mark Clover of Creative Mountain Games and Steve Jackson Games.
Over the past few years, the event has started to gain more recognition and mainstream media attention, including coverage from Polygon and Wired Magazine. The tagline “March Fo(u)rth for GM’s Day” has also since been adopted and used extensively to refer to the event.
What happens on International GM’s Day?
While some local game stores have events that take place on (or close to) GM’s Day, one of the major hallmarks of the holiday is that a number of publishers offer discounts on TTRPG products. A few of the many sales going on for GM’s Day this year in 2023 include:
- DMsGuild’s GMs Day Sale
- DriveThru RPG GM’s Day Sale
- Pelgrane Press’s GM’s Day Sale
- Pathfinder Infinite’s GM’s Day Sale
- Storyteller’s Vault’s GM’s Day Sale
Players are also encouraged to purchase RPG and D&D gifts for their GM, to try a new game they haven’t played before, and to run a one-shot adventure with a GM as a player.
And what about having an International Player’s Day? As the original post on EN World notes rather cheekily, when it comes to tabletop role playing games “every day is player’s day”.
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Cameron Nichols is a Senior Editor who lives in Boston, Massachusetts, and has been playing D&D since the early 90s, when he was introduced by his older brother and cut his teeth on AD&D 2nd Edition. Since then he’s played virtually every RPG he could get his nerdy little mitts on (including a weird Goth phase in the early 2000s when he rocked Vampire: The Masquerade pretty hard). His favorite D&D campaign setting is the Forgotten Realms and his favorite character to play was a Half-Orc Barbarian named Grug (who was unfortunately devoured by a gelatinous cube).
