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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 8992914" data-attributes="member: 4937">If you can run a good role-playing game you can probably handle just about any small group leadership task provided you have domain knowledge - bible study, business meeting, revolutionary cell, support group, hobby club, sport coach, etc.  I kid, but only a little.There are limits to how much the GM can delegate and still maintain a particular style of play.  The trouble is that the GMs actual primary job is something you don't mention.  The GM's primary job at the table is "secret keeper".   The purpose of the GM is to emulate a particular aspect of reality and that is that the participants don't know everything.  You can see this going all the way back to the GM's origin in professional military role-playing games where the purpose was to control the flow of information between the two sides in the conflict.  The goal was for the two players (or teams of players) to make command decisions based only on the information a real-world commander would have at the time.   The "referee" or "secret keeper" showed each player on the other side of the screen only those moves that they could see.  (These days we'd have a computer act in this role.)  This style of free form open wargame with limited information was introduced to the amateur community through the Bronstein, one of the direct ancestors of the modern RPG.  The secondary role of the GM is actually referee, in as much as in theory a game could be played with perfectly complete and unambiguous rules and as such a referee wouldn't strictly be necessary, but the "secret keeper" that controls the flow of information would always be necessary.  That's where the GM really comes from and it's the reason why the GM has limited ability to delegate.If the GM delegates, you aren't playing the same game.  You revert back toward the experience of being able to see "both sides of the screen" which moves the experience of play for a player from being a participant and toward being an observer.  The experience of being involved in the story creation as a narrator inherently takes you out of being involved in the story creation as a character.The only real reason a GM needs to know the rules and game better than any player is because they are the secret keeper.  As secret keeper sometimes they are cranking the game engine in situations where only they know what rules are being engaged or why.  It's easy enough as the GM to ask for player input into rules situations where the player has full knowledge of what is going on, but sometimes you aren't in that situation.  Likewise, sometimes players make propositions without full knowledge of the circumstances (in fact, usually they do so) and now you need to apply knowledge of the rules secretly so as to not reveal information in an untimely manner.</blockquote>

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