Shared GMing

+Tim Shorts, +Chris C. and I have been doing some round-robin GMing with a shared world. It has been a good time. Here is a bit more about what have been doing in bullet point form:

• Using a Simple Rule Set: We are using Pits & Perils and it has been serving us well.
• Keeping the Group Small: This was a hard one for us, but we had decided to restrict our group to just the three of us. We had been talking about this style of play for several months and decided that it would work best with the three of us. As far as gaming goes, it was the right decision. Personally and socially, it was difficult thing to do.
• Short Adventure Arcs: We have been rotating the GMing duties every 2-4 sessions. Each time, whoever is GMing starts a new arc for the next 2-4 sessions.
• Not Quite a Sandbox: Each adventure arc has started with a specific problem to solve or task to complete. Rather than spending time with the players figuring out what the characters are going to do, each arc has started a bit more railroady. Sometimes it is as simple as an NPC asking for help (we have all used this at least once). Other times, the PCs travel into a village with a major problem to be solved. We made a conscious decision to start off each adventure arc with a specific task or goal. 
• Not Much World Building: We have not done much world building, except what was needed to support each adventure arc. The minimal world building was not intentional but I think it has worked fine so far.
• Same Characters: Each of has been using the same player character throughout. When one of us is GMing, the GM's character simply sits out those sessions. 

Team GMing

So our gaming group has had a few end-of-session conversations about doing some sort of team or collaborative GMing. I remembering trying a variation on the theme back in high school, with a common set of characters flitting from GM setting to GM setting. Each session featured a different GM, using the GM's own setting, but the characters had the (unexplained) ability to move from world to world. I also played in a session in college where the GM tasks rotated from moment to moment during a single session--it was one of the better gaming sessions I have played in, but it was also the only one for me that involved a significant amount of alcohol.

It turns out that Wikipedia, the final arbiter of knowledge in our current age, has an article on this, calling it the Troupe System. Wikipedia summarizes the Troupe System this way: A Troupe system is a way of playing role-playing games which spreads the game master's responsibilities among each of the players. The term was coined in Ars Magica. It is also known as collaborative role-playing, a term used by other games with a similar mechanism.

Thanks to +Chris C. (The Clash of Spear on Shield) for sharing the Wikipedia link with me, as well as a few other links. Here are some other links:

Troupe System (Wikipedia)

Troupe Style GMing and the Gaming Charter (Gnome Stew)

Troupe Style (Project Redcap)

Starting To Collaborate (Collaborative Roleplay)

And my own blog post from yesterday was a lead-in to this post: Microscope and the Books of Bardo