Im gonna try and explain my thoughts on the role of the GM and why I dont feel like its worth it.
First off, these thoughts are not aimed at GMs, they are aimed at designers, but maybe GMs can still gather useful ideas from reading. I also subscribe to a separation of the roles of Adventure Designer and Game Master, the first one dealing with adventure prep, encounter design and homebrew, and the second one being in charge of running the game at the table, which is the thing im gonna talk about.
I've talked a lot about how I feel like the current ttrpg culture focuses a lot in gameplay being used to support a story, and how I think that forgetting about telling a story and letting the game create moments that can later be turned into a story in retrospective works better with the medium. When approaching game design like that, the GM goes from being a director to just a referee.
In the days of Gygax, rules where hidden information from the players, as well as dungeon layouts, adventure text and monster statblocks. I really hate this approach because it makes it so you HAVE to choose to be either a GM or a player, because knowing the rules or having read the adventure beforehand means you no longer get the intended experience of the game. Now, newer games dont usually ask players to be completely ignorant of the rules, but a lot of people still feel like knowing what happens in an adventure will ruin it for them. I take the approach of making all information public: rules, adventures, monster actions during combat, random events, etc; this approach demands that the adventure is able to be replayed and still offer a challenge, and that someone can read the adventure, get excited about it, and then run through it having the kind of fun they expected. Since I keep all information open in Sightseer, all players have the same degree of access to them, there's no need for a dedicated position for the rules keeper.
You can argue that running NPCs is still something you do as a GM. I have been able to ignore that problem in Sightseer since its a game about travelling, and interactions with NPCs are often short and rules-driven, with the vast amount of deep social interaction being inter-party dynamics. Even then, I think that players could be given out NPC sheets they are supposed to play out, maybe even gaining a benefit for nailing the character. Playing out multiple characters at once is nothing new to the hobby, troupe parties, dcc player 0 funnels, playing out a familiar, or even any situation where a GM plays out two NPCs at once.
At the end of the day, the GM becomes a figure with no agency on the table, but I still have a case against the use of the role. Even when you consider the GM a director, having someone willing to direct play at every table feels like a really hard to meet requirement and puts the GM in a position where the game depends on them being available to run every session. In most tables Ive been in, a player missing one session due to a conflict in schedule is not dire, maybe you choose to cancel or maybe you make up a reason for their character to be missing, but any time the GM is unable to attend, the session must be cancelled. That is a lot of pressure to put on someone that as a designer I dont feel comfortable with.
If anyone comes out of reading this post rethinking the need of a GM figure to achieve the experience their ttrpg is trying to provide Ill be happy. I think that a lot more ttrpgs could be gmless and that most gmless games also rely way too much on random word generators youre meant to interpret, instead of on rules that guide play.
