When do you need a GM?

Traditionally RPGs centralize many responsibilities and authorities in one player, the GM. That's not necessarily bad, but it isn't necessarily good, either, and it's certainly not mandatory. I am going to look at some traditional functions of the GM to see why we put them in one player's hands, and how we might distribute the responsibility for these functions differently.

A GM traditionally does a whole bunch of different things:

• Pitches the game
  
• Organizes play sessions, including recruiting players
  
• Knows the rules and teaches others
• Leads creatively
  
• Creates the background ("worldbuilding") 
• Creates the scenario for play
• Runs dramatic coordination
  
• Frames scenes
• Says "what's going on" generally
• Plays all side characters
  
• Resolves in-game tasks and conflicts

Pitches the game, organizes play sessions, knows the rules. If the entire play-group is interested in gaming and excited about games, anybody should be able to do these things. (This or that player may not be able to do these, but the responsibility should be shared among all the players.) These are the social responsibilities of the GM, and they could go away in a heartbeat and we would all be happier.

Leads creatively. In theory the whole play group can equally share passion and a creative vision. In practice this is unnecessary and unlikely; one person will be more enthusiastic about the game than somebody else, more experienced and able to set the agenda for play, able to evaluate player moves as skillful or not, and so on. Traditionally this person is the GM, because the GM traditionally has the social responsibilities listed above, and the greater workload listed below. If you don't have a GM, you will probably still have somebody who leads creatively. That isn't a problem.

Creates the background. I don't think you need a GM to create a background for the game. I think responsibility for the background has been claimed by GMs, historically, because they enjoy "worldbuilding", and see it as an artistic endeavor. Nothing wrong with that! (Though I wonder how many avid worldbuilders will also complain that they can't get their players interested in the wonderful minutia of their world...) But the background could just as easily be created by the whole play-group, or any other subset of players. No reason you couldn't have a background czar to tell you things like "Ah, the next town over is Hardby, a matriarchy with a population of 10k.".

Creates the scenario for play. I think that you may or may not need a GM to create a scenario for play, depending on the kind of scenario you are going to play.

If you're playing D&D, and the players play commandos raiding a magical underground labyrinth, it's crucial that all the facts about the labyrinth are nailed down in advance, and that the facts are secrets until the players discover them. Players are here for the challenge of overcoming the labyrinth, they're here to make a series of risky maneuvers with imperfect information. If they have perfect information, they're not playing the same game anymore.

If you're playing Monsterhearts, and the players all play teens in a classroom, where everybody knows everybody else, and conflict comes from players clashing against each other, you don't need a GM to create the scenario. In Monsterhearts, all the players create the scenario by filling out the seating chart. There is a GM in the mix, who asks the other players leading questions to help fill out the chart with maximum dramatic potential, but there's no reason that has to be one person's job. In my successful Monsterhearts games, the other players already asked each other leading questions while filling out the seating chart.

Monsterhearts seating chart -- four different hands wrote this! Mine was not one of them

I think that, in general, if the scenario involves discovery, you have to have a GM to create the secrets which will be discovered. If the scenario does not involve discovery, you are probably fine without a GM.

Runs dramatic coordination. You don't need a single dedicated person to run dramatic coordination. But many games need dramatic coordination to be done by somebody, some of the time. Some games require everyone to run dramatic coordination (S/Lay w/Me, Shock: Social Science Fiction). Others require players to advocate for their characters (Sorcerer, Apocalypse World), and you cannot simultaneously advocate for your character and run dramatic coordination. If you're running dramatic coordination, you have to act outside the standpoint of a specific character to set up coincidences and contrivances, often to explicitly put a character in a bad spot. Meanwhile if you're advocating for a character, you want to think and act within their standpoint, to advance their interests as they understand them.

I think you can get away with both dramatic coordination and character advocacy without a GM if you simply switch off dramatic coordination duties. When you don't have a main character in a scene, it's your job to run dramatic coordination. When you do have a main character in a scene, it's your job to advocate for them. (What if everybody is in the scene? Somebody simply takes the reigns, I guess. First person to see the necessity of an act of coordination.)

Frames scenes. I don't think the GM needs to frame scenes, in general. Everybody knows when a scene has ended, and everybody knows who we want to follow next. Anybody can say where a scene takes place, relying on either logic or dramatic coordination. Anybody can say what the weather is like, or the time of day, again relying on logic or dramatic coordination. (Roll on a table, even.) One exception: if there are hidden aspects to the scenario, the GM (the person who knows these secrets) has to be the person to frame scenes around them, because nobody else can.

Everything else. For the rest of the responsibilities given to the GM, I'll provide some general thoughts, because my mind is too muddled for anything more concrete.

In general, you don't want to be the person who both poses and solves problems; it's simply boring to play your own opposition. So when all the main characters are on the same team, you need somebody else to run the opforce against them. It doesn't matter if the opforce is an intelligent, organized enemy, the natural world, or anything else; if the game is about overcoming a challenge as a team, you need somebody to play the challenge.

Let other people say what new bad things happen to your main character.

Whenever you play any character, you want to rely on your prior understanding of the character when you make moves. If you're committed to consistency (within reason), anybody should be able to play a side character, particularly if they don't have a main character in the scene. We may find that some player gains a better understanding of a given side character, and grant them exclusive responsibility for that character; that's fine.

If you have a solid task or conflict resolution mechanism, and the play-group shares a strong understanding of the game's genre and constraints, you don't need a GM to provide resolution. You may want a particular person to say what happens in a particular resolution (for instance, if somebody successfully attacks an enemy, you want the successful attacker's player to say how that goes), but you definitely don't always require it.

Moving forward

We want a GM because we don't want anybody to pull their punches and we don't want the game to boil down to a group storytelling exercise. We should have a division of authority in play; different people should be responsible for saying different things. But I don't think our authorities need to be nailed down in advance. Instead, I want to play more games where I discover authorities in play.

I bet many RPGs don't actually require dedicated GMs. I intend to play a few without one, and see if anything comes of it. Next up I'll write my playtest guide for shared MCing Monsterhearts, and we'll see if my play group accepts it.