One Player, Many GM's...

[timfire]

Back in the Forge Birthday Forum, Ben Lehman brought up this idea for an rpg, in the "Tell me about... your unfinished game ideas" thread:

Prophet -- A single-player multiple GM game about the one man who can change the world.

I have to admit, this idea really intrigues me, and I've been wanting to discuss it for some time now. The reason I'm interested is because I don't feel the typical RPG design works well for "solo"-type adventures.

While I don't really have experience with GM-less/ rotating-GM/ all-GM games (so I may have some misconceptions), this type of game sounds like it would be something different. If I'm understanding Ben's idea right, it sounds like the defining feature of this type of game would be that only 1 player would be allowed to play a protaganist, everyone else (ie, the "GM's") would only be able to play an antagonist or supporting character (if they are allowed to play a character at all).

So here are a few questions:

1) I guess my first question is whether y'all agree with my assumption that this type of game would be something different from typical GM-less play?

2) Do GM-less games ever get played this way? If yes, does anyone have experience with any long(-ish) running campaigns played this way?

3) Does anyone have an opinion on how well such a design might work? I mean, its one thing to ask 1 person to support many, but another to ask many people to support just 1. I wonder how well such a design would keep all the GM's interested.

4) To Ben: though I mean this thread to be a theorectical discusion, have you thought much about how this concept might be specifically designed?

[anonymouse]

Couple of URLs for you:

Smacked Upside the Head with a Guitar

WTF?

I'm very jazzed by the idea in general, as you can see from both threads. ;) Unfortunately, I have not (and fear I will never) been able to get a group together for this kind of play; I can't really offer any actual play insights into how well it works.[/url]