Knight/Squire

Situation: The dukes are going to war and your manor is right on he border of two rival dukes on opposite sides. You must choose.

Sorcerer/Apprentice

Situation: Your duke is going to war and is calling their sorcerer to their side. Your master was a trusted adviser and lived on the ducal estates but his children were raised in a religion that sees sorcery as sin. Will you answer the call?

Lady/Young Lady

Situation: The dukes are about to go to war, your castles are where these wars have historically begun and your lord is about to make a series of disastrous decisions that could get your noble house wiped from the ducal lists.

Bishop/Acolyte

Situation: The dukes are at war and you must decide how the holy knighthoods will arrange themselves so that the church will best benefit.

Criminal/Thug

Situation: Fucking dukes are feuding and your city is under siege. Gather food or make a run for it?

Bandit/Desperate Killer

Situation: The nobles are at war. The knights are busy. Time to profit.

What’s this now?

One person GM’s, other 2 players play characters. Rotate these roles as you come to satisfying chapter ends. All in the same world. Think of chapter-change-of-POV fantasy novels. Everyone should take turns GMing, playing the senior character and playing the junior character.

Rotate back, make sure everyone gets to play the tutor and the learner. Mix it up as needed. Things are going to get complicated. Lore for the world and an expansive list of NPC’s is going to get generated quickly.

The goal of this is to mix up the GMing so everyone gets a chance to GM for a small group. I would have never gotten the hang of running a game as dense as Burning Wheel if it wasn’t for the amazing players at my table helping me with rules questions. Right into my 20’s I told everyone I had no head for game systems.

If more people are going to GM, we have to set up games to help teach and mentor them to do so. It takes a table to run a game.

After some conversations about the mentoring that went into getting me to take up the GM’s seat back in the day and reflection on the people who have helped me get better at it over the years. I found myself wondering if we could structure games specifically so that the GM’s role is both modeled and handed over to our friends, hoping to de-mystify the process.