Bedrockgames
Legend
So what’s your point? That Microscope is not an RPG? Or that GMless RPGs don’t exist because players in Microscope share some responsibilities that would fall to the GM in other games?
I think one of the essential requirements of the role of GM is that it performs different functions from the rest of the participants; wouldn’t you agree?
I think his point is it still requires a human mind to adjudicate, even if that mind is being distributed across many players. It definitely creates a different feel, and I think at the very least, this is a subgenre of RPG that might strike a player of a more standard RPG is hard to grasp. But based on that description it still does seem to rely on human referees. I think most people would assume that role is separate from the other players. But it is certainly possible to do it in different ways. Even beyond system, going back to the 90s I've seen games with co-GMs, I've had a player take on the role of my villain NPC, and there are plenty of ways you could cut it up. These approaches are certainly not the norm. They definitely rely on a human to help expand the creative possibilities.
And again, exceptions don't break the rule. You can have games that are like RPGs in all kinds of ways, but deviate from a core feature. That doesn't make the core elements vanish. There are some basic things that leap to mind when you talk about an RPG and one of the biggest things is 'there is a GM of some kind'.