DM-less D&D

[Kanegrundar]

They did long ago. D&D The Boardgame.

??? I must have missed that one. the only thing close that I recall was that old Dragon Strike boardgame.

EDIT: Nevermind. I know the product you're talking about. I finally tracked down copies from a company that would ship to the US. That's OK, but it doesn't use D&D rules, just the barest hints of D&D rules, so that one doesn't count IMO

 

[Mark]

I guess they are trying to do something along the lines of this?

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/descent.html

 

[buzz]

How about Wushu, Universalis, or Polaris? All are RPGs. Two of those are designed to be played without GMs, the third works perfectly well without one, and none of them use boards at all. I believe that also applies to Donjon. Try some new games, man.

Dan beat me to it. You don't need a GM to have an RPG. At least, no one person needs to serve in the GM capacity all the time. Polaris actually has a GM, in a sense (the Mistake), but the role shifts around the table.

I think you have to read "any game" as "D&D," though, in this thread's context.

 

[Jakar]

I don't know about this one. I think having a DM is the thing that makes D&D what it is.

 

[Fenes]

In one of my current campaigns, we alternate DMs during the game between all three players, depending on where the characters are and what they are doing. It works out decently.

 

[delericho]

Well, you could construct a sort of semi-adversarial game, where half the group control a PC party, and the other half control the monsters. Might even work really well for dungeon crawls, where one DM then doesn't have to handle everything.

I don't see it working quite so well for an ongoing campaign, although it might do. Adding a "random plot complication" deck might well get closer to the ideal.

However, I'm not sure that that's really DMless D&D. All it's done is shifted the rules-adjudication role to everyone (which is a good thing IMO), and shared the storytelling role between multiple people (which tends to be a bad idea, IMO).

It could work, and I would be interested to see it. However, it doesn't sound like a game I would like to play, and if that ever became the way to play, I think that would be the end of my involvement in the hobby.

The reason I would almost certainly would not like that form of game is that I much prefer to DM. It's what I enjoy, and it's something I've gone to a lot of effort to become good at. Remove that, and most of the point of playing has been removed (for me, anyway).

 

[Viking Kitten]

It sounds to me like it comes with rules.

I just picked up Dungeon Tiles from my flgs and I can confirm that it does NOT come with any rules at all. It shows a couple of different dungeon layouts that you can build with the tiles - which are very nice and very thick - but no rules for using them without a DM.

So where does this "DMless random dungeon format" come from that Mr. Wyatt mentions? Something they just made up? Something from a yet to be published book? Dungeonscape perhaps?

 

[Mistwell]

In one of my current campaigns, we alternate DMs during the game between all three players, depending on where the characters are and what they are doing. It works out decently.

That's exactly what I was thinking. Couldn't you just have a card for each tile with room description and DM information, and the DM rotates from player to player, and the DM-player for that encounter reads the card and plays the roles of the NPCs and monsters while someone else plays his character or while his character is played as an NPC that encounter? Seems like it could work, and involve role playing, and still be plenty of fun.