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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jim pinto" data-source="post: 4719788" data-attributes="member: 17619">Good post. First. I'm not trying to bash anyone. I have a philosophical opinion that 99% of RPG playing isn't about anything morally substantive. Example: We kill the orcs, because they are orcs. That comes up in discussions of mine as a result. I wasn't trying to tangent. Nor am I trying to tangent now.You made a point that choosing left or right needs to be important. That if the GM doesn't script it ahead of time and just MAKES IT UP, then your decision isn't important. Then your counter to that is rumors that might point you left or right. Which, I feel has little bearing on the previous concern. If you don't know the rumors, then you're flipping a coin. If you do know the rumors, then the GM isn't just making it up as you go.If you're playing without a GM, neither of these problems will arise. Either, the collective "story" already indicates where everything is, or one player at the time of the choosing has the arbitrary ability to determine the relevance of the decision before it's made.However, your entire posts makes BINARY decision making the most important part of an RPG as though nothing else were going on during a session. Some players enjoy the narrative aspects of play. Others characterization. Others storytelling. Others environment and details (ala SCA). Choosing to attack the goblins from the right flank because you found out their training is weak in this capacity is significant for 2-6 encounters. Hardly the gestalt of the play experience.Using DOGS IN THE VINEYARD as an example. If you're not familiar, you effectively play AGENTS of the church who can do whatever they want. Imagine PALADINS without alignment restrictions, but instead a mission statement. In the game, you can decide to do anything you want. Even burn the entire village to the ground (occupied by people of your own faith) to rid the faithful of sin.You can choose do this regardless of information, but without information the choice is meaningless. With information, the choice is a desperate attempt to solve the present problem in front of you. In either case, the true merit of the game comes from1. The acts of the characters and what they represent to their moral views2. The consequences of the characters and how they affect the "emotional" response to the game play. (Certainly you can play without feeling "bad" about what you've done, but as a collective story-telling experience, it does have meaning).Now. Dogs is a poor example, because to date I can't figure out how to run it GMless. But not for the same reasons people oppose running D&D GMless. Once you add the moral liability of decisions and someone having to interpret the consequences of non-binary decisions, then running a GM-less game gets even harder.Choosing to fight the orcs or the lizardmen is no more important then choosing to turn to page 7 or 12 when you open your first choose your own adventure book.All of this aside, arguing the merits of WHY you should run a GM-less game seems counterproductive. Either you want to try it out or you don't. You're a smart guy and there's almost 100 posts on here now. You know whether you can afford to risk the fun of a month's worth of D&D play to experiment with this model or if you really just like things they way they are.I'm not going to judge you for choosing to play D&D the same way you've always played it. I will contend though that if the most important decisions that are going on in a D&D game are LEFT or RIGHT that you're probably missing out on a lot more fun than you could be having.Left or Right doesn't feel like I impact the world. Avoiding a specific tavern in the city because the owner feeds more than his fair share of money to the oppressive church of Wee-Jas feels like an interesting and layered choice players can make in a world layered with details they all helped to build.</blockquote>

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