Yeah, maybe that sounds odd, or stupid, but I figured I'd ask. I'm getting a little burned out of always being the DM, and we like Kingmaker, and no one else wants to run it...
Has anyone out there come up with a way to play PF sans-GM? I could easily just not read the book, use the blank map printout from the PDF, and we could populate areas with random encounters in addition to those in the book. We've all played collaborative storytelling games before, and others that afford players a great deal of narrative control (like in the FATE system), so the story aspect of doing it might not be such an issue.
But how would combat look? Sure, we'd have the stats & suggested tactics for encounters from the book...but how do you run the actual combat? Part out monsters so every player controls one or more? Rotate control among players if there are fewer monsters than party members? Elect, on a rotating basis, a player to control all the monsters, and hand off his PC to another person for that encounter?
I figure that since this is all made up anyway, it's not like we'll break anything...might as well give it a try.
Suggestions, anyone?
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i flirted with it, and it worked ok, for the most part. a few things to keep in mind if you do a GMless game
1) everyone needs to pitch in, take turns to control NPCs and what not
2) spoilers and metagaming are a difficult to get around, each group has to find their own way
3) each session, encounter, ect, some one has to be in control, to some extent, if no one is in control things fall out of hand, to kind of balance encounters rotate who controls the monster but do have someone in control
4) pick the best "actor" to control NPCs, and the best meta to control monsters for best game play
5) pick someone to be the rule judge, for rules inquires
our GMless game fell throw since no-one build encounters or worked on it, doing an AP should solve that problem...
Could try rotating GM each session.
Sorry, but I don't think it's possible to run an AP without a GM. I've used a dungeon generator and encounter charts before with some friends to create simple dungeons without a GM, but the complexity (and not to mention intrigue) in an AP really requires a GM.
I think maintaining a story will be very hard without a dm. I think story and roleplay would suffer, because most of that is directly facilitated by a dm, but a dungeon crawl can definately be done. In fact there are games that exist that do if for other systems. For instance, the castle ravenloft boardgame is essentially a 4E dungeon crawl.
I think if you build the dungeon using cards randomly drawn or rolled for on charts you could make for some interesting(ish) combats, but a cohesive story just wouldn't work without someone directing the world a bit.