GM as Subject-Supposed-To-Know
Ernst Mach, Self Portrait, 1886, plate from Beiträge zur Analyse der Empfindungen
Being gamemaster can be anxiety inducing. Within the session, you have the moment to moment responsibilities required by the game itself - describing the scene in a way that players can grok, adjudicating the rules, managing the spotlight, and maintaining a consistent world. Outside of the game, GMs often take on all sorts of additional responsibilities - scheduling, mediating interpersonal conflicts, and ensuring that others are having a good time to name a few. This feels doubly true in the Discord era of RPGs, where communication around the game might occur around the clock. Much ink has been spilled on ways to distribute these responsibilities more equitably, both in blog post form or entire games like Dreams Askew, but I think many GMs experience some or all of these roles in their groups.
I think it's productive to frame this position in terms of psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan's "subject-supposed-to-know" (French: sujet supposé savoir). For Lacan (and many scholars before and after), knowledge is something that exists in a field of human relation. That is to say, there is no knowledge that isn't being held, given, or received by humans. Being subject-supposed-to-know is the subjective experience of having that knowledge (or at least having responsibility for doling it out). Lacan is particularly interested in this position in the patient-therapist relationship, but it can apply to all sorts of positions - teachers, doctors, and gamemasters.
Before going further, I want to underline that I am not a psychiatrist or psychoanalyst, nor am I particularly well read on the subject. I have a shallow understanding of the topic acquired through reading adjacent to my art practice. Certainly I am not your psychoanalyst, so take what follows with a grain of salt.
Nonetheless, I think we can draw some useful insight from considering occupying, approaching, and roleplaying the subject-supposed-to-know, particularly when playing OSR/NSR games.
On Occupying
We've already touched on the responsibilities of being a gamemaster at many tables, required or perceived. Part of the role of describing the world and adjudicating the rules is maintaining the position of subject-supposed-to-know. It's a useful position to have! People listen to you, not because you have some power over them, but because you have knowledge they want (or to which they want to have access). When the sidebars and table-talk get too distracting, its that position of relative authority that makes it easier for the GM to get things back on track.
I think this is the phenomenon from which the perceived transgression in being a "backseat GM" or a "rules lawyer" stems. In the past I've heard aversion for these behaviors being attributed to some sort of distaste for rules knowledge, but I think it may have more to do with jeopardizing the comfortable and knowable distribution of responsibilities at the table.
One useful insight from Lacan is that the subject-supposed-to-know may have many sources of expertise, but the psychoanalyst is never an expert on the inner life of their patent. Ultimately, that's the patient's job. The same can be said of the gamemaster-player relationship. The player is the ultimate expert on what is fun for them and the ultimate agent of what they want to do at the table.
I often like to extend that area of authority to include rules and lore that are relevant to their particular interests. If I have a player who really wants to open a tavern, I can comfortably delegate knowing the rules for enterprises to them. If I have a player who is playing an elf, I can delegate what being an elf is like too them. Multiple elves? Their description morph to correspond to a particular culture or faction of elves.
There is already a rich discourse on gatekeeping in and around TTRPGs that I won't reinscribe here. I will flag it, however, as deeply related to this topic. The GM is frequently placed by the rules and by social convention in the unique position to give and withhold access to information (and thus often material objects in the fiction). I think being proactive in your strategy for equitably and accountably organizing your game session is wise and that means considering the way you are performing your role as subject-supposed-to-know.
On Approaching
Just as it can be stressful to be the subject-supposed-to-know, it can be anxiety inducing to approach the subject-supposed-to-know. We want the people we approach to have information for us. I wouldn't want to go to the doctor's office only for them to shrug and say "your guess is as good as mine." At the same time, we don't want others to have information about us that we'd rather not share. A contemporary concern about surveillance is also a concern about the subject-supposed-to-know.
I want to be careful about not extending an overly inclusive "we" though. I know that I occupy many positions of privilege, so my interactions with a subject-supposed-to-know will typically be less fraught, less prone to gatekeeping, less dangerous. Folks who arrive at our table may have different experiences based on the complex, intersectional mix of positions they occupy.
All of this is preamble to say that it pays to have empathy for those asking you for information as a GM, where you can. Your players may not have access to the game in the same way that do you, and to some degree they are being vulnerable in expressing that gap.
As a slight aside, I also think that the blogosphere is full of folks jockeying for the position of subject-supposed-to-know. Whether its for clout, for profit, or simply to be heard against the din, folks deploy all kind of rhetorical strategies to secure their position. Ultimately, I think it pays to be cautious of anyone positioning themselves as having unique access to knowledge, especially if they want something from you in order to access it yourself.
I don't want to relitigate the whole affair, but I am thinking particularly of last year when Justin Alexander renamed his old article on "Jaquaysing the Dungeon" to one on "Xandering" it. There was a time for Alexander where it was useful to instrumentalize the subject-supposed-to-know status of someone closer to the origins of TTRPGs. Doing so amplified his post and gave his words the gravitas of the sources of knowledge frequently respected in OSR spaces. Later, on the eve of a major book launch targeting new GMs seeking guidance and introduction to the hobby, he renamed the post. At that point, cementing himself as subject-supposed-to-know seems much more advantageous.
Of course, I don't have any particular insight into Alexander's thought process and these are just my opinions based on the breach, drama, and following remediation. I do think its an instructive example for how we might apply Lacan's term to dynamics in the parasocial space of blogging, not just at the table.
On Roleplaying
Frequently, I find myself roleplaying as characters that the players want to get information from, whether that's a witness to a crime, a wizard who has access to a spell, or a thousand year old ghost who might know what's in the next room. In these instances, it can be useful to think about the manner in which these characters occupy the role of subject-supposed-to know.
Do they do so gleefully or under duress? Do they lord it over the players, delighting in their relative power, or are they anxious, eager to pass the burden to someone else? What are the stakes or risks for the players in approaching them for information? What standing might they lose if the subject-supposed-to-know finds out they don't have the information they seek?
I think all of this can be super productive at the table, particularly in fleshing out a one-off NPC the players approach on the street. I also think of the Seers in Mythic Bastionland as archetypal characters who are defined by their role as those with access to knowledge. What must that be like, being the Serpent Seer and maybe being the only person who really knows about the threat of the Wurm?
Information, or the promise of future information, can be a tantalizing reward for the players. It opens the door for more game (as in the case of a treasure map or a list of potential suspects) and it gives them leverage over other characters who don't have that information. I love giving a map that's coded or needs some specific insight to become useful, since it both gives me NPCs to get the players invested in and buys time for me to figure out what the maps contents actually are.
In Conclusion
You've no doubt noticed the ways I've danced around positioning myself as a subject-supposed-to-know throughout this post - issuing disclaimers, starting sentences with "I think," stopping short of prescription where I could. This is something I find myself thinking about a lot lately with regards to both my principle hobby and my day job as a lecturer. Personally, I've been trying to more intentionally manage my relation to burn out as a GM and this definitely factors in there as well.
As I look back over the post, I don't think I've come to many firm conclusions, but rather stated some initial observations and advanced a few potential take-home lessons. I'd be curious to hear if this resonates for you, if you think I'm off base, or if there are specific facets that you'd like to see fleshed out in greater detail.