I’ve played a bunch of GMless games and one of my favorites (that I haven’t seen mentioned yet) is Karma. It’s got some really simple but fun mechanics that keep all players engaged, the playsets it comes with are fun, and it gives you the tools to come up with your own playsets. In some ways it reminds me a lot of Fiasco, but less crunchy. Really easy to pick up, IMO.
What's your favorite GM-less game and why?
2 Likes
I have enjoyed Jabuki Kaiser’s Ruins of the Undercity, which is a solo system based on Labyrinth Lord.
1 Like
One of my favourite GMless games is Grey Ranks by @Jmstar
I’ve written a long review about it over here https://planesailinggames.com/grey-ranks/ but in a nutshell you are child soldiers in the polish resistance in Warsaw during WW2. The game progresses through a series of chapters where things are getting progressively worse as it did in real life.
Your characters are balancing their duty with their personal needs. The game mechanics provide evocative scene prompts, and the available prompts shift with the emotional state of each of the characters.
It is a game which I enjoyed playing a lot, and left us all with feelings to process at the end. I would commend it to anyone who fancies a deeply emotional experience with a GMless game!
https://planesailinggames.com/grey-ranks/
Cheers
8 Likes
Polaris by Ben Lenham
One of the early gmfull games out there. The phrasing use of conflict mechanics is really tight and creates fantastic uninhibited scenes.
The premise is great and beautiful. You do however be willing to play in a tragedy, where there are two outcomes: you become a demon or your die.
Peace, Steve
8 Likes
Mine would have to be Fiasco.
The bare-bones rules are there simply to structure the story, and the dice mechanics add just enough randomness that the players can never tell exactly how things are going to end. (Well…other than “poorly.”)
3 Likes
Thanks for the kind words about Forsooth!
2 Likes
Something that I hope might become a favourite GM-less game in the future is my game A Cool and Lonely Courage, which will (hopefully) be on Kickstarter later this month. Please keep an eye out for it! Some information about it is available here
1 Like
Hi I only used Ben because that is the author name printed on the book if people wanted to find it. Just wanted to clarify. I should have put Ben Lenham / P H Lee, but I didn’t want to imply it was two different people. Thanks.
I recently finally got the chance to start a game of Contenders (by Joe Prince), which is a GMless game of boxers in a tight situation trying to get by. The design is influenced by My Life with Master, and works exceptionally well. You all play the main character from Rocky, in a sense: you compete as a championship boxer, but you also struggle to make ends meet and to take care of the people you care about. The format of the game is really reliable and easy to use.
A tremendously solid and playable early GMless design (2005, I believe), which delivers every time, as well as a fun competitive mini-game built into the boxing matches.
(If you want to buy the game, the most “current” version is called “Eternal Contenders”, which is a little more complex and reskinned for fantasy gladiators. However, the old ashcan version is plenty playable, too!)
3 Likes
For me it’s a toss up between Dialect and Fall of Magic.
Dialect is an amazing game that’s delivered great experiences every time and it plays in a single sitting.
Fall of Magic is more expensive and I’ve only ever played it once, but that 4-session game was absolutely one of the highlights of my decades-long gaming career.
I’ll play it again at the drop of a hat.
2 Likes
GMless games are completely my jam, I think that they’re a really interesting way of shaking up the table dynamic. They’re also really cool to design for, because it’s about empowering everyone at the table to make the same kinds of decisions, which means that a lot of the traditional work of the GM actually falls onto the designer’s shoulders.
I have published a few myself:
Cold Comforts: A game of survival and community building in the wake of an ecological disaster.
Memories in the Making: A game of a group of friends making their last summer together as great as possible.
Thrones and Powers: A game about a street war between opposing factions of wizards, vying to see who gets to take on the true powers up top.
Of other folks’ games, I’m a real big fan of Dream Askew especially. Avery Alder taking the PbtA system and making it GMless is brilliant in its elegance. Plus, the setting of a queer enclave in the midst of an ongoing apocalypse definitely feels very real in 2020.
1 Like
Mine is most definitely Fall of Magic.
I’ve played it exactly once (at Pax Unplugged in December 2019), and I absolutely fell in love with the game.
I bought a copy two weeks later as a Christmas present to myself.
4 Likes
I can’t seem to get enough of Ironsworn! The mechanics seem to come from a mind steeped in PbtA sensibilities and captures them perfectly in a GM-less format. With or without other PCs, the game feels fantastic.
3 Likes
Link has changed, and I can’t see how to edit the original post! Here is a current link
And here are some stories people told during playtesting
The game I’m currently working on is a GMless epistolary game
I adore GMless games and will definitely say that Fall of Magic might be my favourite game of all time. It does so much with seemingly so little and its components give it a timeless, vintage feel straight out of the box.
Recently, though, I’ve been falling deeply in love with Belonging Outside Belonging games (Riley Rethal’s Venture and Galactic, Dream Apart, Dream Askew and Flotsam: Adrift Among the Stars being the ones I own). It has the same charm that reading through PbtA books always gives me. It doesn’t just let you run genre fiction, it shows you why you would want to, why it’s exciting and how to hit the tone perfectly. It boils down your typical PbtA’s 2 page character sheet into a half page set of gutpunch pick-lists and synapse firing descriptors and sums up the chapters of GM principles and moves into a single pick list of features, a paragraph description and three (?!?!?) moves on each setting element. It boils the contents of a (relatively) chunky PbtA book into a thick roux of setting, drama and inspiration. Magical.
5 Likes
Hey, I’m new to the community and saw this thread and it absolutely piqued my interest! I’ve always kind of batted around the idea of a GM-less game and was curious how one would work…seems like a good place to start!
I was wondering…are there any that are comparable to, say, Masks? I’m absolutely in love with Magpie’s system, but finding a game is a nightmare. A GM-less game might be a good alternative! I’m checking out Capes, but are there any others?
Also…just kinda wanted to revive this thread because I love the idea of GM-less games and I’d love to see more options to look into!
2 Likes
Hi Whimsy…
You’ll probably find some really fruitful matches on Epistolary Richard’s mini-blog-series, GAMES WITHOUT MASTER.
Here’s the link: https://gameswithoutmaster.blogspot.com
He’s done a series of reviews of tabletop roleplaying games that run without a GM.
There’s treasure in there!
6 Likes