But if others can extol the virtues of their playstyles and design decisions, how can that be done for GMless games without falling into the aforementioned trap. For me, the search for the right question to ask here must start with: What are these games actually doing? Not the same thing, is the first answer. There's a huge gulf between Kagematsu, Polaris, Fiasco, Dream Askew, Microscope and so on. Aren't they all distributing authority, though? Isn't that what they have in common? Talking about the advantages of distributed authority over the advantages of not having a GM is a step in the right direction but still not quite what I'm looking for. Because it, again, focuses very much on the idea of a GM when you could also, for example, talk about distributed play since everyone has a character in most of these games. What I want to try here instead is to take some interesting GMless rpgs and look at how they work, how it is necessary for them to work that way, why that's something to enjoy.
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This GMless rpg, according to its author Gregor Hutton, "rewards those that listen to other players." What does that mean? If you succeed in a conflict where you didn't play your own character but opposed another character with a faction, you gain a free die for later use. An incentive to taking an interest in other player characters. But more fundamental is something else: Agency isn't something you can take for granted in this game. If you want it, there's a decision to make. EITHER get other players to invest in your character by playing a faction, giving the character a chance to further their goal and the other player to earn a free die (but they alone decide if they want to do this, not you) OR secure agency by going up against another player character as your own and have them rip themselves apart PvP style. There's also always the option of making a deal with a faction, raising the stakes for everybody. So the less the players invest in each other's play, the more fucked are the characters. This structure makes it possible to have a situation in which very disparate, distant player characters have their lives crashed by powerful factions or other player characters without at the same time distancing the players from each other's play. This makes for a very engaging fictional space with multiple perspectives and a lot of uncertainty.
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What Emily Care Boss's GMless rpg Sign in Stranger promises is to experience a totally alien world. Elsewhere the Weird is usually geared towards being understood, as a trap, a particularly demanding enemy or a nameless horror. Here when something is encountered nobody at the table has any idea of what it is or how it works. The azure, crystalline spikes floating softly above the ground might be a defense mechanism, a garden or our alien hosts. We don't know. Two things are necessary here: First, I'm supposed to experience this world as my character, so I'll ask another player what I see, hear, smell etc. and they answer me based on a random word. Second, for my character to combat alienation and gain agency, I need to be able to investigate the world and try to make sense of it. Because guessing - as I might want to in a more challenge-oriented game - will lead nowhere in a random and meaningless environment like this, I need to be more assertive. So I get to assign meaning to the things I find in this strange world and may for example determine through (successful!) investigation, that the spikes are indeed a garden, but one that stores memories. So emerge the strange worlds of this game.
To author Avery Alder play is "a conversation, an exploration, and an experiment." Scenes just spring from being curious and - in a departure from the PbtA standard - from everyone asking questions. That of course means, that everyone has to be contributing as well. This process is very intuitive as it is what you'd expect a conversation to be like. Apart from these free contributions, players play their characters and occasionally pick up aspects of the world to play. They do this when another character engages with that aspect. Once their own character engages with their aspect, a player hands it away. This is necessary because as a game "of belonging outside belonging" the dynamic relationship between the community and the outside world is what's to be experienced here, not the outside world as a place that is explored by the characters or an obstacle in their way somehow. Notabene: While Avery's game is certainly the cutting edge of GMless roleplaying right now, still not every GMless design would necessarily profit from her approach.
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Kagematsu (2009)The eponymous Ronin in Danielle Lewon's game is and isn't at its center. If his player, who has to be a woman, decides to, she alone will put the village women wherever she, as Kagematsu, wants to encounter them. She's in every scene. She also must judge for whom her Ronin harbors love and for whom pity, depending on the performance of the women, who are supposed to be played by men. So unlike the above it is a very asymmetrical GMless rpg. Which it has to be since it aims to put a woman in a "traditional masculine role, meting out love and pity." Also, because it is very much a game of intimate relationships and drama, a game about decisions on both sides, every character including Kagematsu needs a player with stakes in the game. The interesting thing about it is, though, that despite Kagematsu's role in the game, it is still very much about the women and their personal and communal struggle. So the configuration here brings out both sides very well.
Above I hope to have shown why you'd want to have the advantageous structures and mechanics I laid out instead of why you wouldn't want a GM. Because in the absence of a GM role, there really is a lot of space for very different and very cool roleplaying.
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| Nevertheless a valid sentiment, of course. |
Now, if you don't like what I'm saying, maybe listen to other people (who have actually designed GMless rpgs) for some different opinions:
Ben Robbins - http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/884/gmless-talk-eccc-2017/
Jason Morningstar - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnVgDDCleNk
Joshua Fox - https://blackarmada.com/some-thoughts-about-gmless-gaming/
Jason Morningstar, Joe Prince, Mark Diaz Truman, Meguey Baker, Nathan Paoletta - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KU9Y1hz7184
For a more academic approach, see Emily Care Boss, Ivan Vaghi and Jason Morningstar with Beyond the Game Master, pp. 163-169 here:
https://nordiclarp.org/w/images/a/a0/2012-States.of.play.pdf
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