How do you set up an effective "party leader." You obviously don't want to curtail anyone's agency, but sometimes a party leader is narratively necessary. I'm thinking of those pirate campaigns that demand a captain or military campaigns where the party is intended to be a squad + squad leader.
What are the responsibilities of such a figure? Can they issue direct commands? Do they just break ties when it comes time for a party vote? How do you keep the trope without creating a weird out-of-game power dynamic?
In one of the games I've played, our characters have been granted nobility and estates to go with it. In-universe, it made sense for only one of the characters to become the official head of the estate thus being granted the highest noble title.
We've made sure to separate when it was relevant the decision-making by the players than the one by the characters. This or that political inclination would suit the character of the leader but the player of another character wouldn't enjoy the campaign going into this direction so we the players made sure to be aware of it. In short, the decisions by the leader as leader were taken collegially by the players by meta-game discussion among ourselves.
However, it was mostly to prevent things unwanted by some players from happening. For the rest of what constitutes leading, the player playing the leader had agency on what decisions his character made.
tl;dr - By having a meta-game veto over the in-game decisions of the leader by the other players.
LOL awesome comic!
The very first game of Dungeons and Dragons (or any RPG for that matter) was September 1985. I was in a friend's dorm room and a couple of guys came in to finish a session that had started the night before. I started to leave and my friend told me to stay and play the character a guy abandoned in favor of another, a fighter with the oh so imaginative name "Crusher". I had no idea what to do, but he said just watch and you'll catch on fast.
I did. Without meaning to I became the party leader. The other two guys just kept doing stupid things that almost killed all of us more than once. Getting more confident about myself as we played I began making suggestions and the other two guys just fell in line with everything I brought up. We got through the adventure intact and with an unexpected treasure bonus because we were the first players to ever complete my friend's home-brewed module. I didn't make "direct commands" or anything like that. I just suggested and pointed out things that could be done differently or better than the ideas they kept coming up with and I was willing to go first in order to test those ideas. Later my friend told me those guys had never once played in a game where the game didn't end up in a sort of Three Stooges Tragicomedy Death Trap. That whole academic year when I first began gaming my characters always seemed to be the ones who took point and led others by example instead of just trying to be the loudest one to shout over the other players in order to get things done.
Out of game, I guess I just carried this on through the rest of my life. I managed a video store for a year once and at the annual managers' retreat, my regional manager told the rest of the people assembled he had never seen a staff so willing to work with a manager before. He even said "His crew would follow him to hell if necessary", which got a pretty big laugh. Over the decades I've been the glue that has kept our gaming group together and made sure our circle of friendship has remained close with each other. I'm a natural mediator when feathers get ruffled. And really, I think gaming has helped me to do that, rather than the other way around. I don't know if I answered your questions exactly as you had hoped, but that's my take on leadership in parties, in both real-life and gaming.
Making it clear that even if you are the leader, you aren't the sole deciding factor.
Naturally, a party leader usually comes to the fore during gameplay. They're the ones pushing the plot along when no one steps up and making suggestions for actions the party to take. Not so much "You do this and you do this" but "Here is our objective, what do you all think we should do to accomplish them."
Any decision that MUST be made by an in story party leader should be voted on prior to the decision out of character. Either that or a "I must confer with my advisors."
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You don't need an official party leader, but someone should be driving the plot forward. This is particularly important in play-by-post games, which are very prone to running out of steam.
I think the O.P. was specifically asking about those cases where all the characters are not on equal footing, where one is hierarchically superior to the others in whatever hierarchy the players believe in.
He is talking about a character leading other characters, not particularly a player leading the other players.
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For me, this has varied a lot from game to game, even with the same players. Some of it depends on the specifics of the setup, like one game I played we were all part of the military, one player was the sergeant and gave out orders to the rest of the squad. Most games aren't that structured, the party is just a bunch of randos thrown together by circumstances. Many groups are just a chaotic mess, with everyone doing whatever they feel like. On the other extreme, I had one group back in the day during 3.5 that I was GMing and the players drafted an adventuring accord that they all signed. Completely player driven, with no input or influence from me, they just wanted to. It had specific roles like treasurer, map maker, and party leader, including their responsibilities, details of how treasure was split into shares, how roles were to be assigned, and more. It was like a 6 page document. They were a very lawful group. In another game we're all nobility, but my pc is much higher ranking than the rest. I mostly take a back seat in that game, but occasionally flex my authority for important decisions or to break up stalemates or indecision. If you want a leader as a GM, having a built in pecking order included as part of the story works pretty well in my experience.
I didn't make "direct commands" or anything like that. I just suggested and pointed out things that could be done differently or better than the ideas they kept coming up with and I was willing to go first in order to test those ideas....
Out of game, I guess I just carried this on through the rest of my life... And really, I think gaming has helped me to do that, rather than the other way around. I
Love this answer a whole bunch. Taking the initiative and putting in the work makes you a leader, whether you're formally declared one or not.
Always cool to see gaming-into-IRL-skill stories like this. :)