I was looking back through some of my older content, and I'm reminded of my failed attempt to run a Shadowrun (5th) game.    While the culprit there boils down to information overload. it also got me wondering.

Do Round Robin (i.e. games where players take turns GMing) actually work?

I have never seen it work.  Either the game dies before the change over or immediately after.  I think it could work, just haven't had that experience.

I've done them in face-to-face games, but never online.  If the Players/GMs were proper dedicated, don't see why it couldn't work here as well.

It may not quite be what you are talking about (using a game that normally has a GM and passing that role around) but the game Capes does this really well. I played it once, PbP and it was a lot of fun.

Troupe-style play works as well online, in my experience, as more traditional play. Not everyone has an equal desire or capacity to GM, of course.

In reply to Beolvine (msg # 2):

I got to thinking more about it.  What might work best is if there's an overall story arc, and a bunch of side-quests.   There should be a primary GM; who would be the one who does things like having the final say in rules interpretations, resolving disputes between players, and stuff like that.

As an example: The parties main mission is to kill the dragon/overthrow the tyrant/etc; this storyline would either be controlled outright by one person (the "primary" GM).   And as the others take a turn, there's side jobs to do such as escort the emissary/rescue the princess/delivery the relic/etc.
This message was last edited by the user at 04:44, Tue 20 Sept 2022.

Another method would be as a variation of GM-less gaming, where most of what happens is decided by random tables, with each players taking turns adding details and descriptions. How well it would work would likely be heavily dependent on how well the player styles mesh together.

I'd be sure that your style and the style of the other GMs mesh if the round robin takes place in the same game world.

We had an issue long ago where each of us had a totally different way of doing things, so each new GM felt like they had to 'fix' the others. Like Person A likes a low power level game, but Person B took over and gave everyone way overpowered gear because they like things to be super buff. Person C spent three sessions removing most of that stuff because they hated that idea and wanted more action and tension so they threw in several party NPCs to stir up some chaos, which Player A then took over and killed them all off because they wanted their low power game back. Not to mention all the side quests. One person threw us into undead, another hated undead, etc.

You get the picture. It was a fustercluck of epic proportions, which ended up escalating into real world hurt feelings.

I think this is far more a question of who the participants are than one of the game [mechanics].

When I first started playing OD&D c.1975, there were three of us around the table. We were all in our mid30s, married, working professional jobs. We drew up a game world and took turns creating and running scenarios. This went smoothly for a year or so. When our group expanded to about six—still all similar type guys—I more or less became permanent GM.

Of course, in those early days characters hadn’t evolved into the demigods they had become by the 90s. By that time, our group had moved on to Morrow Project and Deadlands and others. And the seeming inevitable entropy set in and the group withered away, replaced with new groups and players and game runners. I’m probably the last of all those friends still involved in the RPG hobby.

O tempora, O mores.

One way to make it work is to run the games concurrently, in different threads.  That way everyone gets the turn right away.