Rotating GM

[Xibalba]

The playtest group of my game has been going well, and, as everyone is getting more familiar with the setting, several players are coming up with adventure ideas.  This has led me to the idea of a rotating GM.  [BACKGROUND INFO: My game, Heirs to the Lost World, is a fairly tradtional rpg in which the GM has most of the power of narration.  It is set in an alternate 1665 in which the Spanish conquistadors were defeated by magic-wielding Aztecs.]

By "rotating GM" I mean that the GM duties would change between adventures. For example, one participant may be the GM for several game sessions as the PCs rescue the governor's daughter. After that adventure, the PCs may decide that they want to ignore the map to the lost Mayan ruin that they found and instead try to intercept the Spanish treasure fleet.  At this point, the group decides who is going to run that adventure.  The participant who was the GM now becomes a player for the next adventure. My plan is to include the "rotating GM" option in the GM advice chapter, rather than having it be mandatory.

The advantages to this is that the group will create a huge web of interactions all over the setting.  GMs are encouraged to leave plot hooks in their adventures that could lead to future adventures. Players would have more choice in deciding what they will do, rather than feeling rail-roaded down a pre-determined adventure path.

WIth this said I have two questions:

1.  Is this something new or are there already some games out there that do it?

2.  Is this something that would be fun?  I know my play group likes the idea.  Not everyone wants to be GM, and that is okay.  Is this just my group, or do you think other groups would enjoy it?

[Moreno R.]

1.  Is this something new or are there already some games out there that do it?

The game ARS MAGICA by Jonathan Tweet & Mark Rein•Hagen  (first published in 1987 by Lion Rampant, now in the 5th edition published by Atlas Games) introduced the idea of "troupe play", where the players rotated in the roles of the GM and playing the minor characters ("grogs"). The idea was that everybody had a couple of characters (a magus and a "companion", to play _instead_ of your magus when he is occupied in his laboratory), plus a lot of secondary characters that could be played by everybody, so every session you could play one of your two characters, or play one or more grogs, or you cold be the GM.

This option (the game can be played in a more "traditional way") is offered, as an advice to the players, but the game don't support this style of play in a "mechanical" way. The characters and the roles are fully separated (the only difference between a companion, a magus or a grog, in the rules, is the way they are generated with more or less "points"), and the fact that two or more of them are played by the same player and the GM isn't always the same person is totally left to "metagame" (or, in other terms, to the social contract)

A game that is based on a rotating GM's role is RUNE, by Robin Laws, published in 2001 by Atlas Games. This is a "competitive" rpg where everybody play against the other players, and the GM's role (when you can really try to kill the other characters) change many times in a session of play, so maybe it's not very similar to what you are thinking.

In more recent years I have seen many rpg where the GM's powers and responsibilities (Ron Edwards call them "Authorities", in this very interesting thread: Silent Railroading and the Intersection of Scenario Prep & Player Authorship) are more or less shared between the player, from games where there is still only one GM, but the players have some of these authorities, to games where there is not a GM (or where everybody is the GM, from another point of view), like Polaris or Shock

If I understand correctly your intentions, you are thinking about a "Rotating GM" in the Ars Magica sense: a "traditional" GM role, with the person playing it changing between sessions. If so, you could do it in the "Ars Magica" way (tell the readers that they can play with rotating GM, and leave it at that) but I think it would be much more intersting if there was some support, in the rules, for this kind of play. Because I don't remember ever seeing this done (but don't take my word for it, there are a lot of rpg around I didn't even hear about...)

[knicknevin]

This approach has been adapted to a number of indie games which we have played at our RPG club, most notably Dogs in the Vineyard: over the course of 8 weeks, a group of four players each take a 2-week turn to provide the Town that the Dogs must clear up. Everyone has their own PC, but the PC of the current GM just sits out that Town (probably studying the Book of Life or atoning for sins committed in the previous town)

Some games on the market specifically mention the rotating GM idea, such as Best Friends, but the approach there is that each scenario is a separate entity, so only players carry across from one session to the next, not characters.

[Xibalba]

Thanks for the information, Moreno.  It sounds like Ars Magica is doing just what I was thinking.  I also agree that this would be more interesting if there are mechanics that connect with this that are built into the rules.  I have a couple minor mechanics so far that do this a little.

Mechanic #1: After each adventure, the GM awards Days of Passion to the players based on their actions during the adventure.  Each Day of Passion gives the player a chance to roll a skill check and perhaps earn a Character Point that can be used for advancement.  After all the Days of Passion rolls, each player takes turns narrating the story of their days of passion.  The player who will be the next GM goes last.  He or she has the right to insert minor details into the other stories to help connect to the next adventure.

Mechanic #2:  Just after character creation, players present their character to the group.  Each character is then given a few mior characteristics (such as backgrounds) from the other players.  These characteristics are left intentionally vague so that they can be used as hooks in future adventures.  For example, if I hope one day to run an adventure in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, I may give another character a contact and a rival from Tenochtitlan.  Therefore, when it is my turn to be GM, perhaps I could have the contact send a message asking for aid, therefore drawing the PCs to the city.

I want to keep the rotating GM model optional, but I would still like additional rule support for it.  Any other ideas?

knicknevin, In Dogs in the Vineyard, is the rotating GM model built into the rules or is it just presented as an option in something like a GM advice section? 

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

The key to this kind of challenge, I think, is in making sure that no one has a conflict of interest. The first thing you want to do, therefore, is separate player resources from character resources.

This is hard to do in a "traditional" RP system because the GMs typically don't have resources and are left fending for themselves on what to do. The Shadow of Yesterday deals with this in two significant ways: 1, there are Gift Dice, which everyone, including the GM, has to hand out to someone because they like something that player did, said, or just because they think they're cute. The other is that XP is given when someone uses particular tools on their sheets, called Keys. When a player uses a Key in a particular way (those ways are listed), the player gets resources to spend on the character.

Now, normally the GM in TSoY isn't allowed to receive Gift Dice; it doesn't make sense. But if you're having a deliberate GM rotation thing, maybe the GM can hold onto those dice until they're not GM anymore. That is, they receive a benefit for GMing well. The possible conflict of interest here is that players are reducing their own efficacy to reward a future player if they're actually giving them to the GM. Not great. So perhaps what happens is, every time a Gift die rolls +, the GM gets that die for later. If more Gift Dice are in play, it means people are jazzed about each others' actions, which probably means the GM is doing a good job.

(It could also mean that the GM is just making things really hard, which is maybe great, maybe not. It depends on what the players are after.)

Playing with ideas like this will likely get you somewhere good. When I chewed on it really hard, though, what I came up with was a need to completely distribute the authorities of the GM in order to eliminate conflicts of interest. In my opinion, the normal GM position is one where you have to play both sides of the game, and that means a very delicate balance between totally hosing the protagonists and being unable to give them the conflict they need.

That said, we had no problems whatsoever transitioning between GMs in Dogs, but we completly changed out characters when we did that. There was an option to keep them, but everyone wanted to try something new anyway. All the protags were just about finished at that point, 3 towns in.

[MatrixGamer]

Engle Matrix Games can be played using a floating referee.

Each turn a player says what they want to have happen next in the game. They pick another character to be their referee. The referee decides how likely an action is to happen. This is traditionally a GM job but in this case the referee doesn't have all the other powers GMs are often given (you know - the power to say what all the NPCs do). That power is in the hands of the player making the argument.

Different from what you're talking about but related.

Good Luck with the project!

Chris Engle

[RobMcDiarmid]

I played several sessions (primarily D&D dungeon hacking) with my group where we rotated GMs during the session. We used a handful of guidelines that worked quite well.

We used an object that represented the "GMs Mantle". Any object that can be placed in 3 different postitions works. We often used a stuffed animal. The current GM would place the object in one of the positions to represent their current state of mind.
1 - On a roll. I know where I'm going with this and I'd like to get there. Please don't take over unless you have a really good reason to do so.
2 - Neutral. I have ideas, but I'm open to other options if anyone feels inspired and wants to take over.
3 - Flailing. My creative juices have stopped flowing. Please somebody take over. Please.

At any point, a player could grab the object and become the GM for a while.

The only other rule we felt that we needed was that the GMs character was present but only able to conduct basic attack and defense actions while that player was GM. Nothing even slightly fancy.

The main thing that was different about those games compared to regular games was that we did more work together as a group before the game started, defining the setting so that we were all on the same page. We set the game in one town and tried to keep the action all there, so that it made it easier to stay coherent.