My incoherent thoughts evoked two comments, one by Cary (don’t know him from Adam, but the Internet is funny that way) who suggested Universalis, and one by Shiffer who suggested I look at Polaris. Now, I haven’t read either, but judging from what I’ve read about them, neither sounds like what I’m looking for.
Universalis seems to involve competative manipulation of the setting, through the currency of coins – spend coins to create new components of the setting, or to control components others create. I worry that this put the players too much in the GM author/director position, and less in the player/actor/immersive point of view. Furthermore, the competitive aspect worries me – it reeks of Shmulik’s play style.
Also, the expenditure of coints seems to involve some book-keeping, reminding me of Ran‘s G_DS game (system designed with Jake), where a lot of book-keeping seemed an irrelevant break in the action (G_DS, a game of supernatural entities playing at being Gods and uplifting worshippers from the ooze, is perhaps one setting that something like Universalis could really fit. Ran was a brilliant GM for this, although our short-lived campaign did involve Shmulik, and I cried like a baby when my character died, soul-sucked into oblivion while fighting a Spider-god from another dimension).
Universalis does appear to have a mechanism I rather like, which involves buying more coins by adding complications to the setting. Although in the competative atmosphere, I suspect this might be another option for abuse.
But yeah, my “vision” of GM-free play is not “make everyone a GM” so that all the players are doing the god-game, but rather let the GM go down into player-land and immerse in character, with the system – and the join creativity of all the players – bringing up complications.
The desire for immersion is probably why I’m not keen on Polaris either – the entire ritual-based system is oriented on creating a distancing effect – which is excellent for the purpose of evoking the remote, long-lost fairy tale or legendary mood of that game’s setting, but isn’t quite what I need for running the sort of games I run to my peeps, or the sort of games I want to play in.
And sneaking into player-land is really what this is about.
Or maybe forget about GM-less play, Tarot cards and XP for plot-complications or whatever unformed ideas I’ve got, and instead focus on the old trick of inserting a character that serves as “the GM’s PC”. I never really liked that technique, really.
Pauline – the plot-device that walks like an underwear model (but with glasses) – might be the closest I got, and that’s not very close at all.
Oh, yeah, there’s also Capes, which is GM-less and also Supes. Worth looking at, perhaps.