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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9013460" data-attributes="member: 42582">The inference from 5e D&D is incomplete to RPGs are incomplete is not sound.I won't comment on 5e's completeness (or otherwise) as I don't know it well enough. But there are RPGs that are complete (eg In A Wicked Age; Wuthering Heights). The reason they have a GM is nothing to do with incompleteness: rather, it's because the gameplay relies on an asymmetry in relation to elements of the fiction. <a href="http://lumpley.com/hardcore.html" target="_blank">As Vincent Baker put it about 20 years ago</a>,You need to have a system by which scenes start and stop. The rawest solution is to do it by group consensus: anybody moved to can suggest a scene or suggest that a scene be over, and it's up to the group to act on the suggestion or not. You don't need a final authority beyond the players' collective will. You need to have a system whereby narration becomes in-game truth. That is, when somebody suggests something to happen or something to be so, does it or doesn't it? Is it or isn't it? Again the rawest solution is group consensus, with suggestions made by whoever's moved and then taken up or let fall according to the group's interest. You need to have orchestrated conflict, and there's the tricky bit. GMs are very good at orchestrating conflict, and it's hard to see a rawer solution. . . . In our co-GMed Ars Magica game, each of us is responsible for orchestrating conflict for the others, which works but isn't radical wrt GM doage-away-with. It amounts to when Emily's character's conflicts climax explosively and set off Meg's character's conflicts, which also climax explosively, in a great kickin' season finale last autumn, I'm the GM. GM-swapping, in other words, isn't the same as GM-sharing.That is not to deny that incomplete RPGs might need someone (the GM, or whomever else) to do an additional job, of making decisions to cover gaps in the rules. But that is not the most fundamental reason for having a GM.</blockquote>

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