# The Forever GM tags: #thoughts First, check out [@Vindicta'](https://x.com/KennethProven)s [video on the Forever GM](https://youtu.be/syygEs8HJr8).  By the end of high school, I had become the Omni GM. I would literally run any game you put in front of me for your group, or my group, or anybody that walked up, given a few days preparation and even the slightest hint of interest. Interestingly, *D&D* was never in that list because anybody who wanted to play *D&D* could always find a GM. It was, after all, a game built around GMs. It was the GM's group. It was the GM's campaign. They "had" the players. I was a "specialist" in much less mainstream games, whether it be *[[Palladium Fantasy]]* or *[[Robotech]]* or the game I really cut my teeth as GM for on and off for the next decade: *[[Call of Cthulhu]]*. *[[Cyberpunk (RPG)|Cyberpunk]]* was in there, *[[Shadowrun]]* was in there. If anyone had ever asked me about *[[Traveller]]*, I would have been ready to go at the drop of a quarter, but no one ever asked about that. It wasn't popular in the Atlanta Metro in the 90s, at least in my circles. It was about 1997 when I realized that I was the Omni GM and was risking becoming a **Forever GM**. I was even then terminally online, first in BBSes and then telnetting into university systems where I could access Usenet and finally running my own Usenet node in my bedroom. There was a serious community of RPG discussion in all of those spaces. The idea, if not the term, to cover a Forever GM existed even then. GM burnout was a thing that happened regularly enough that there were massive threads reaching back into the late 80s discussing how, when, where, and how often it happened, and how it had happened to people in the newsgroup and how they felt about it, how it had changed how they approached the hobby and what they wanted to do inside it, and all too often, how often they walked away from the hobby entirely. I was particularly lucky on a couple of points. I wasn't deeply entrenched into an obsession with the traditional GM/player dichotomy in classic RPG design. In fact, I was increasingly disinterested and detached from it. I'm inherently a misanthrope. I don't like people, ironically enough, so the idea of being the sole source of entertainment for a group in an ongoing way always struck me as wrong. I loved the play of RPGs but didn't love the necessity of the overhead of being the sole motive force for groups, and that's the way it almost always ended up. I was lucky because the end of the 90s was the beginning of a different approach to tabletop role-playing games in some very essential ways. You can trace it back to *[[Ars Magica]]* in '87 if you want a beginning of the twist to troupe-style play and explicit discussion of rotating GMs/story guides. collaborative worldbuilding as a core directed element of the rules. At the turn of the 21st century, I was done. I was ready to hang up the Omni GM hat, and some of the systems existed to allow me to do that. I was really big into *[[Over the Edge]]* and *Ars Magica*. I was already starting to be an active member of The Forge and getting into those wrangling entanglements and arguments/discussions over decentralizing GM power, and even dissolving the very idea of the GM as part of gameplay. That aspect of things tickled me and pleased me in a very deep and abiding way. *[[Sorcerer]]* came around in 2001, and while it still had a GM, it was explicit about not throwing effort into pre-planning outcomes. Needless to say, *Sorcerer* made me extremely happy, and the discussion around it, including the depth of debate and exploration of what games and game stories meant to players was huge. But then the really big thing for me hit. The thing that absolutely consolidated the fact that I was never going to be the Forever GM because I was never going to be the Omni GM, because I was **never going to be a GM again**. *[[Universalis]]* by Ralph Mazza and Mike Holmes came out in 2002, and it was a magical epiphany. Actually, that oversells the impact. In terms of the marketplace, I don't think too many people noticed it at all, and I could never really get a regular group together to play it. But for me, as both a game designer and what I increasingly thought of as a **game facilitator**, it changed the world because *Universalis* doesn't have a GM. It doesn't even have a setting. What it has is a set of core mechanics which completely distribute narrative control based on a token economy. When I say completely distribute narrative control, what I mean is everybody at the table can build part of the world and must build part of the world for there to be a world to play in. If you've never seen this game and you have no idea how it might be played, see if you can dig up a copy. It will change everything you thought was true about role-playing games. From that point on, I knew what was going to be true. I wasn't going to be the one that brought all the work to the table. I **might** be the one that organized getting a group together because I don't mind doing that. I might be the one that helped pick a game and learn the rules to help other people learn them, to be the *Omni Facilitator*, if you will. I don't mind. I enjoy that. It's how I ended up living in a giant tabletop RPG and wargame library. I love rules and I love understanding them. I just wasn't going to be the Omni GM anymore. I wasn't going to run anything you put in front of me because I wasn't going to **run** anything again. I've been very good at adhering to that in a couple of decades and more since. I haven't run a game as a GM since. In fact, I think the last time I ran a game as a GM was actually *Ars Magica*. No, wait, that's not true. The last time I ran a game as a GM was at a local game store's all-night game marathon, and as the last set of sessions I ran, it was *[[Donjon]]*, a tongue-in-cheek minimalist fantasy game; then turned around and had players rewrite their characters in *[[Wushu]]* at the mid-break (this only took 5 minutes) and pick up play with an entirely different, even lighter set of mechanics. (The idea of changing mechanical systems in mid-game has never really left me in terms of something I'm amused to do. You can see that in the now over-a-decade-old online Let's Play from my old group in *[700 Horsepower](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPds0FG8uEYQDlAsvp9XFQzj9JSzKYEcq)*.) Obviously, the ensuing 20 years has been a huge boon to decentralized gameplay and the technology of playing games. I don't mean online gameplay, though that is huge, but I mean the actual understanding and methodologies of how we play games. We have been pushing the limits on how decentralized things can be. In 2010, Ben Robbins put out *[[Microscope]]*, which is another of those games as crucial to my understanding of and enjoyment of gameplay as *Universalis* was a decade before. Another game that if you have never had the pleasure of experiencing it or looking into it, you absolutely should, because it will change how you think about settings at all and whether or not you should be creating them alone, or should the process of creating the world in which you explore be a project for the table at large. Let me stop rambling to get to my ultimate point: Not only do you not have to be a forever GM, you don't have to be a GM at all. You really don't. There are a multitude of awesome games out there in which there are no GMs. There are merely players and all the world's a stage. You can play one of those. Hell, you can play one of those with your already established group, one who may have fallen into the unwise patterns of responsibility that lead to the Forever GM and GM burnout. You can just stop doing that. In fact, if you truly are the Forever GM for that group, you have all the power to stop doing that and do something else. One could say that you have a responsibility to stop doing that and do something else, but not by changing the kind of game that you're playing in midstream, without changing the system, because that will just lead to disappointment and discomfort for you and your players. If you're going to change how you do things, do it in the context of changing the game you play. That will help everybody, including yourself, change gears and adapt to a new way of doing things. - Embrace Session Zero and talking about what everybody at the table wants, including you. - Embrace distributing responsibility for the story onto the players through their characters. - Embrace zero prep, just coming to the table in order to play. - Embrace being part of the game and not just being the entertainment for the evening. Now, you might discover that playing GMless is just not for you, that you miss that central role of decision making. While it wasn't for me, your mileage may certainly vary. But you don't have to go back to the old systems which have the old habits and the old ingrained attitudes baked into the rules. You can go to more modern games in which the GM's responsibility is not to roll the dice (in some cases, the GM never touches the dice). The *[[Blades in the Dark]]* inheritors (**Forged in the Dark**) very explicitly put the impetus for bringing the excitement onto the players. Their characters need to want things, and the systems are geared so that they are incentivized to excitement. You could play *[[Ironsworn]]*, which is a further evolution of that lineage into solo and co-op play, which is essentially just a way of saying that not only do you not have to be a GM, you don't even have to have a group. You can play *[[Fantasy World]]*, which doesn't even refer to the central referee as a GM. It refers to them using a term which I find to be far more direct and sensible: the **World**. There are 10,000 games out in the world, and thousands of them are GMs or distribute power around the table in a way that will keep you from being the Forever GM and instead make you a **Player of Games Forever**.[^1] You don't have to be the dancing monkey. You don't have to carry the weight of the group on your shoulders, and you don't have to change the table that you already have in a way that is going to upset everyone. You can just play a different game. I promise you can just play a different game. If you haven't ever given it a thought before, maybe it's time to think about it. Whether you are the forever GM of your *D&D* party or the forever GM of your *[[Call of Cthulhu]]* investigator group, maybe think about playing something very different. Not in a different world, just playing a different game. --- If you're interested in [the evolution of GMless and facilitator play on the timeline of releases of more centralized authority games](https://gemini.google.com/share/5830175a7fc0), I actually have a timeline that makes a really handy reference that I put together with my hounds. I definitely suggest that you check it out because there's a lot more things in heaven and earth than you have dreamed of in your philosophy, Horatio. https://gemini.google.com/share/5830175a7fc0 [^1]: Why yes, that is an Iain Banks *[Culture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_series)* reference. I see you two are a man of culture and dignity.