The screen is a control panel, not a dashboard
The temptation is to put everything on it: statistics, graphs, average solve times, network status. That is interesting for the owner and worthless to the person standing alone in the building at eight in the evening.
A game master screen has one job: someone who just walked in has to be able to run a group with it, untrained. Anything that does not serve that belongs on another screen, or nowhere.
The test is simple. Can you explain it in two minutes to a stand-in on a Friday evening? If not, there is too much on it.
What does belong on it
The clock. Large, readable from the other side of the desk, with the ability to pause and to add time.
The progress. Which puzzles are solved, which are not, and where the group is now. Not as a list of technical names but as the puzzles are called in the room.
The hints. A button per hint, in the order they are meant to be used, plus a free text field for when a group does something nobody anticipated.
The overrides. Every puzzle must be markable as solved with one button. Groups get stuck, and the next group is at the door at seven.
And the reset. One clear button, with a confirmation on it so it is not pressed by accident mid-session.
What has to go
Anything containing the words universe, preset, channel or IP address. That is the installer's language, not the room's.
Settings that can break. A game master should not be able to change anything that ruins the room for the next group. What does need adjusting sits behind a separate admin page.
Error messages in technical language. If a sensor stops responding, it should say which prop it concerns and what the game master should do, not which code came back.
The status line
One line saying whether the technology is healthy. Green means: everything responds, you can send a group in. Anything else means: this component is not working, and this is what it means for the session.
That matters more than it sounds. Without a status line the crew only discovers something is broken when a group gets stuck on a puzzle that will not respond, and by then the evening is already running.
On which device
We build the controls as a web interface, so it runs on the PC behind the desk, on a tablet in hand and on a phone when someone is standing in the room. One interface, not separate apps that drift apart.
With multiple rooms there should be an overview above it: which rooms are running, how much time is left and where attention is needed. So that one person can cover three rooms on a quiet evening.
What the game master gives you afterwards
Every session is logged: when each puzzle was solved, which hints were given, where it stalled. That is not a way to monitor your staff but a design instrument.
After twenty sessions you can see exactly which puzzle is too hard, where everyone needs the same hint and which prop jams structurally. That is the information you improve the room with, and it costs nothing extra because the system already knows it.
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