It’s amazing what playing in a game can do to spurn thoughts, and this one is something that I’ve seen done well, but also seen done disastrously: GMs/STs who also have PCs in the game. Much like the recent posts this one was inspired by a conversation I had where mentioned that “I feel as an ST/GM that you need to look at your game first, not your PCs.”
I am very much an advocate of if you’re running a game, find a game to play in, with one major caveat: it should not be your own game. Find a different game to play in, one in which you’re only a player, and don’t have any GM/narrator/plot team involvement at all. And I feel that for the vast majority of GMs, including those that are new GMs or GMs who have trouble differentiating between wearing their ST/GM hat and their PC hat, that they should keep them separate games. There’s a few reasons why:
- It prevents a conflict of interest as GMs inherently know more about what’s going on plot wise and who is doing what.
- Appearances and neutrality. Much like a conflict of interest, it can be hard to remain neutral about a situation or event if you’ve become deeply involved in one side of it as a player, and need to make rules calls on it. Players want to know that it’s being done from a standpoint of neutrality and not to benefit certain PCs that your PC(s) have been involved with.
- In your game as a GM, your first responsibility is to your players, not to your own characters, and this makes sure you don’t have character temptations pulling you away from what you should be doing for your players.
All that being shared, I have seen some games where a person is both a player and a GM, however, they are also clearly defined roles, with limits to each role. There are two ways I’ve seen this done.
- The rotating GM. In this style, a person runs game for a set number of sessions or see a particular plot line to conclusion, then they take off the GM hat and hand it to the next person. They become the dedicated GM and the former GM can pick up their character(s) and play. This way there is always at least one dedicated GM to the game, but no one person carries all the responsibility.
- The GM Team. This is where each GM in a game has a responsibility to a particular part of the game. That area is their domain and they get to make rules calls in regards to it. If they need to do something in relation to that part of the game for their PCs then they have another GM oversee their actions or make the rules calls, but only in that case. With this approach you need to make sure it’s very clear to the players which GM is over what parts of the game, that everyone knows where the boundaries of responsibility lie for each member of the GM team. There should also be some caveats that the GM team members need to adhere to, such as no character belonging to a GM can become directly involved with a plot run by that same GM because of the OOC knowledge they have on the plot, or that a GM can only PC for a certain amount of time over a particular time period so that they tend to their GM duties.
Regardless of these ideas, if you do find yourself wanting to spend more time playing your PC(s) than tending to your GM duties, I think you need to revisit if you should even be GMing. If you are preferring to PC over GM then you need to step out of the role of a GM and allow someone else to fill the role of GM who is ready to provide the dedication and support that role requires. If that means that a game needs to fold, then it needs to fold. To not do so isn’t fair to the players, and other GMs, if there are any.