GM or no GM?

[whiteknife]

Having abandoned, rediscovered, tweaked, re-tweaked, and re-re-tweaked my game, I've come to an impasse.

The game is Tamers, and after much thinking I've decided that it's theme is exploration. You play a band of upstart monster tamers who travel the land, fight battles, save towns, meet new people and monsters, and try to become champions. It's got rules focused around drawing maps and coming up with monsters on the fly, while trying to create interesting battles, explorations, and character actions. A tall order, but I'm working on it.

I suppose it'll be important to know that in the game, I foresee it being played where there's a map of a place (say, a town or a forest) and locations are added as the session goes on, and once the characters explore a certain portion of the map it triggers a final battle, and then it's on to the next area.

Anyways, I've been wondering whether or not to have a GM. Actually, the issue wouldn't be whether or not to have a GM at all, but whether to have a single GM or a rotating one. Now here's what I see as the advantages and disadvantages of each side:

One GM Advantages:
Familiar to existing roleplayers
Being in someone else's world without sharing control might increase the sense of exploration
Only one person has to have a great grasp on the rules (although I'm trying to keep the rules very simple and low prep, I find that some people just want to scrape by with as little knowledge as possible)

One GM Disadvantages:
Players might not enjoy the world as presented by the GM
Puts more creative burden on one person

Multiple/Rotating GM Advantages:
Allows everyone to share in the act of creating the world
With multiple people running the game, a more rich and varied world might be created
Allows players to play a wider range of characters

Multiple/Rotating GM Disadvantages:
Some players might not like the idea of having to take responsibility for running the opposition
Possibly a decreased sense of character ownership (although I wouldn't have someone else play your character when you're GM, some people seem to like to play as their character all the time)
Allowing multiple people to run the game might make for a disjointed world (although given the genre I'm not too concerned about this, part of the idea is that there's a wide variety of things to explore)

So, what are your thoughts on my dilemma? Have you had experiences with multiple/rotating GM games? I haven't personally (although I've played in a few GM-less games), so I'd be interested to see how they went. Have something to say about/add to/remove from my lists? General comments?

Thanks for your time!

[chronoplasm]

I often feel that you run into a problem of hierarchy when dealing with DMs. I feel that DMing is kind of a position of dominance over players. The DM sits at the end of the table, sometimes behind a screen, holds the rule books, and controls the world that the PCs live in.
Personally I feel that it is easier to form a social contract between people if everybody is on more equal footing, but that's just me.

I guess what I'm saying here is that you might want to think about the concept of hierarchy and division of labor and how that fits into your game design. You might think about this in terms of politics; do you want more capitalistic gameplay where participants compete for finite resources or more socialistic gameplay where the object is cooperation and division of resources.

[whiteknife]

I guess what I'm saying here is that you might want to think about the concept of hierarchy and division of labor and how that fits into your game design. You might think about this in terms of politics; do you want more capitalistic gameplay where participants compete for finite resources or more socialistic gameplay where the object is cooperation and division of resources.

Interesting. You're right that there might be some power/control issues, and that's exactly the sort of thing I want to discuss here.

But as for your metaphor, what I'm going for is a sort of "look at this cool thing I made" vibe. If I were to put it into one of those economic systems it would be socialist- I'd much rather have this game encourage cooperation than harsh competition, although competition is surely going to a play a rather large role, since it's what makes things "go" in a game.

Although I'm not sure what the effect of one GM/rotating GMs/no GM might be on the power hierarchy. I'd be interested to find out though.

[chronoplasm]

If the game is going to have any combat, I'd think you would need someone to take control of the opposing monsters (unless you can work out some sort of dice AI).
Have you ever played Zombies!!! ? The players simultaneously cooperate and compete, alternating between moving their characters and moving zombies tactically against the other characters.
You might try something like that?
Perhaps obstacles and enemies work less like competition and more like resources with risks. Maybe the players must increase the danger to increase the reward, so that gives them an incentive to play the enemies smart. Does that make sense?

[Jasper Flick]

Why do you discard the possibility of no GM at all? It's even in the topic subject! If you've got some random or impromptu content generation going on, GMless could be easy and fun.

What tasks are there to be done in the game? Enumerate them without regard for who's supposed to be responsible for them. Then go play with the possibilities.

For example, do monster creation and location creation really need to be done by one and the same person? Why not have a monster-creator and a location-creator each session, and perhaps randomize who's which? As long as there are monsters and locations generated, the game probably runs, no matter how it's done.

Performing a specific task, besides being a normal player, might give you some advantages too. Then people might want the responsibilities because of the benefits too.

You could even present the task list to the players and let them decide who does what. Then you can provide example kits like traditional-GM, rotating-GM, everyone-does-something, and whatnot.

[whiteknife]

I have considered no GM, and apportioning the duties out could be a good idea. I'll definitely have to think about that.

Also, I have indeed played zombies!!! (I even have the first 5 expansion sets!) and a mechanic like that could work. Things are a bit more complicated than in zombies, but not by a huge amount.

I like the idea of increased risk=increased reward a lot. Only problem is that it seems hella hard to measure how well someone uses tactics. Maybe I could just make the tactics simple? But even then I can foresee there being issues. I guess the big thing would be to just avoid conflicts of interest.

Having portioned out duties and example "responsibility kits" is a pretty sweet idea too, although I guess the key there would be making sure to outline all the individual tasks and such.

Good ideas so far. I'm interested to hear more thoughts on the subject as well...

[chronoplasm]

I like the idea of increased risk=increased reward a lot. Only problem is that it seems hella hard to measure how well someone uses tactics. Maybe I could just make the tactics simple? But even then I can foresee there being issues. I guess the big thing would be to just avoid conflicts of interest.

I think the easiest way to measure how well someone uses tactics is by measuring the success of their tactics I.E. damage.
Maybe the players want their characters to get beaten up in order to maximize XP rewards or whatever.
Perhaps you could work a kind of "That which does not kill me makes me stronger" philosophy in there; you want to beat your friends up in order to toughen them up.
You want to throw credible threats at your buddies, but you want them to be threats you know your buddy can overcome. You want your buddies to beat the obstacles you send their way so that they can become stronger, thus making the group stronger, thus making you stronger by extension. You don't want to go too easy on them; if you set the challenge too low, your buddy won't advance as much.
It's training in other words.
Just a suggestion.

[whiteknife]

You want to throw credible threats at your buddies, but you want them to be threats you know your buddy can overcome. You want your buddies to beat the obstacles you send their way so that they can become stronger, thus making the group stronger, thus making you stronger by extension. You don't want to go too easy on them; if you set the challenge too low, your buddy won't advance as much.
It's training in other words.

I think this actually fits quite well with the theme of the game (training to get stronger is actually supposed to be the point of most challenges rather than them all being life or death situations). Plus, I think that this is what some GMs (me included) try to do, that is: provide a challenge without it being too much.