THE DUNGEON MASTERS
It explains a lot about Warren Spector, the driving force behind Deus Ex, that his first dungeon master was the author Bruce Sterling. Not only was Sterling destined to become one of the fathers of cyberpunk—the science fiction genre that spliced future tech with social commentary, just as Deus Ex would—but he was a generous and accommodating DM.
“What was most powerful about that first night, and all the nights that followed for the next ten or so years, wasn’t the story Bruce was telling to us,” Spector says. “It was the story my friends and I were telling with him.”
Spector’s head still swims with memories of the Rat Gang, the street crew he ran with as Botara Chitan, a samurai who never smiled. He remembers the way the gang fought and grasped and became a real power in the river city of Shang, and how the campaign ended with… well, he won’t tell us how it all ended. “I’ll get too emotional,” he says, “and embarrass myself.”
Like all good dungeon masters, Sterling understood that his role was to create the scaffolding of a story, an obstacle course that left enough room for players to pick a route through, whether that meant clambering over the top or crawling beneath. As Spector and his friends overcame the challenges Sterling set
