Apocalypse World sans MC

I'll be frank with you: I'm a simple man, with simple tastes, and I want to shoot some things. Unfortunately, I am the DM/MC/whatever in my group. Flat. We tried doing round robin DMing in a 5e game, and that went... Ok? I guess? But now we are back to the status quo. My question was, has anybody tried AW completely without an MC. So far, I've wholeheartedly embraced the idea of declaiming responsibility for scenic elements, names, locations and some NPC equipment, leaving almost half of it to the players. Does anybody know what would happen if the other half was dropped as well. Obviously PVP would need an impartial mediator, but those situations can be dealt with on a case by case basis. Whenever someone rolls a 6-, or takes a 7-9 with an unnamed downside, the MC moves list are there. All the other moves have their mechanics laid out in quite exact detail. Of course, I know I've missed some serious drawbacks to an MCless game, but I'm not quite sure of their specifics. Can anyone see any serious issues to this, and maybe solutions? Everyone would have to be at least proficient at the mechanics and barfing forth apocalyptica, but that is kind of a given.

Well, firstly, it's the MC's job to build the world. Yeah, you can leave a fair bit of this in player hands thematically, but not all of it, and in order to have mechanical impact you need to assign threat types, arrange countdown clocks, and so on. Doing without those is possible...but makes the world really static and mechanically bland when the PCs aren't directly interacting with it.

Secondly, MCs are supposed to use moves but never speak their names. The intent of this is story immersion and the MC is the guy (or girl) who says what happens next in response to what the players say. Nobody but them should ever be positive what Move they're using...it gets in the way of the fiction if they do.

Thirdly, and far more fundamentally, the MC is suppose to be a neutral party. The MC moves are not equivalent to each other, they're on a list, sure, but people picking from the list who aren't completely unbiased can screw an PC really rapidly really fast, and this encourages grudges and metagaming. The lack of a neutral arbiter also removes the 'be fans of the PCs' and 'look at NPCs through crosshairs' aspects of the game, both of which seem important to the way the game is designed to feel and operate.

In short...Apocalypse World works about as well sans MC as D&D 5E works without a GM. The MC has full GM powers and splitting them among PCs could be...awkward. A round-robin thing might be more workable due to the less party centric nature of thje game, but doing without entirely? That'snot gonna be any easier with AW than any conventional RPG.

MCing an AW game is a blast. If no one in your group wants to, may I ask is it because they feel daunted by the prospect or simply find the experience entirely distasteful? It would probably turn out better if you guys decided to create characters, create the world, and then pick an MC. Then alternate either every short few weeks of gameplay to give everyone a ride, or hell even alternating every session and passing the character sheets around in the same pattern. As a social exercise you'll quickly be able to see who enjoys what, and if you guys can pass a game around every session, I'm sure you can work out rules to then play all together at once. A game without an MC will almost certainly be worse then the same game with one.

I mean, countdowns and threat types never need to be referenced, neither does a particular scarcity need to be pin pointed. These are tools that enable the MC to stay true to the narrative, but they're not required in order to do so. Neither are hard moves, they're pretty clear, bad shit comes out and right when its about to slap you in the face, you get to react. I mean, assuming you set up a shared agreement on what types of things can happen, its certainly possible that everyone around the table speaks up and you guys go with what sound narratively the coolest. In my experience, about half of my players prefer to miss a roll because the game gets so much more exciting and tense (granted not every roll).

The biggest loss dropping the MC is continuity. What that NPC says one day, in the hands of one guy, for a reason they might not say out loud but isn't necessarily hiding... might get oversimplified or just plain altered when someone else speaks up in their stead. A person missing a week could potentially cost the game tons of information. PvP becomes messy, but really fighting all together is even worse. If you're passing around a stick rather then all speaking up, then one persons lack of spark can disappoint everyone else, judgements over actions or patterns of less then cool calls can easily threaten the joint venture. It is far better to have that arbitrator to make those calls. The key is finding someone that wants to be that guy.

That said... as an MC you can shoot things. I cannot even count the number of times I've had one NPC yank out a gun and just shoot someone else in the room. Even when that someone had a name history and all the interpersonal ties. You're allowed to blow people away, you should. You're looking at the NPCs through the cross hairs, not just for players to kill them, but also for you to rip them into pieces. You can even roll if you want, but that'll just clog shit up and slow things down at best.

I think a rotating MC is a better proposition than no MC, especially in the group you describe -- MC-less AW is definitely feasible, but it's going to be harder if you're the only one who has significant experience/desire GMing games. It's not really 'MC-less' if you end up doing most of the MCing because the others don't want to, or don't feel confident, or whatever other things are behind you being the 'group's GM'.

If you do try to go with completely distributed MCing, I suggest taking a page from Dream Askew (or for that matter, going and reading Dream Askew and seeing if maybe you wouldn't rather just play that) -- instead of just going at it ad-hoc, after the first session have each player come up with a Front and some connected Threats that they are interested in taking responsibility for.

Try to have everyone choose something that is least likely to directly involve their PC. Probably you want one player's Front to be primarily about the Psychic Maelstrom. Then, whenever things come in play that require MC adjucation, use these Fronts/Threats as guidelines as to which player should be taking the lead -- not just for making moves, but also fielding questions, playing related NPCs, etc.

This will help maintain continuity and some of the pleasure of straightforward character-perspective-inhabitation that is at the core of AWs design, since you will be less likely to have to second-guess the other side of the conversation (or worry about keeping close track of it because later you might be responsible for its continuation.) When there is overlap -- i.e. a PC interacting with the Psychic Maelstrom (Front A) in order to figure something out about the violent cannibals (Front C), the MC with primary responsibility should make heavy use of the 'declaim decision making' and 'ask provocative questions' moves to redirect part of the relevant response to whichever player is responsible for the thing being overlapped.

Besides that, the 'being a fan' stuff is going to be the most important thing to keep in mind; if it comes naturally to your player group, then you should be ok, but if you are used to an adversarial/D&D-gm-y sort of vibe then it will be useful to remind everyone about that and all the other Principles/Agendas on a regular basis.

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But really, probably just play Dream Askew.

Thanks for the advice everyone, seems that running it "MCless" would in fact result in everyone taking part of the job, and everything falling to pieces.  Can you describe Dream Askew to me? The front page reads like an AW hack, but what makes it different?

Yes, it is an AW hack. Specifically, a queer AW hack with a greater focus on community and social issues. (Also the game is free/by donation and about ten pages long.)

It is also MC-less, in a very similar way to what I described above -- responsibility for areas of scarcity/threats/fronts are distributed among all the players. Each Threat comes with its own specific set of Principles/Moves, which can be quite helpful for players who are less certain about MCing, since they have a set of guidelines directly in front of them at the table.

It also removes stats and dice, which arguably makes inter-PC conflict more straightforward to adjudicate, though I could see how that could not be true of some groups.

Ok, so I've looked at Dreams Askew, and I like what they do with fronts/situations. Could that work with AW? Have everyone discuss something they are interested in, then have someone removed from the situation write and run the front?

Yes, that's why I suggested it above. But I wouldn't look at it as someone else writing something on behalf of another player's interest -- people should create Fronts that _they_ are interested in, because they're the ones who are going to be thinking about and fleshing out and portraying those Fronts. Group discussion about what sort of things people are interested in generally is a fine place to start, though, since obviously if someone makes a Front that nobody else cares about at all, that's going to be a bit of a bummer for them. Fronts should certainly not be 'matched' to PCs in a one-to-one way; you want Fronts that everyone has reasons to engage with, just like in regular AW.

Either way there's not going to be parity -- different areas of the game will generate more or less interest at different times, and so players will do more or less MCing depending on the interests of other players and the demands of the story. The only thing you want to avoid is someone creating a Front that clearly involves their own PC; e.g. the player of the Brainer also taking charge of the Psychic Maelstrom.

Okay, there are a lot of ways to do GM-less play, and it can be done for any system. AW just approaches XP and the game fiction better for discoverable play.
First, the concept behind GM-less play rests with randomization. You need a tool for answering yes/no questions, and its also helpful if you have an attached system for surprises. There are several examples at http://soloroleplayer.com/solo-rpg-resources-tools/ and theres even a collection of tools collected together at https://www.rpgsolo.com/play.php# if you dont mind using something you cant download to your machine.

I understand there was a GM-less version of AW more recently, but it was written in French, and I couldn't get hold of the translated copy of it. Really, though, you can number the Principles and roll a die to get a random thing to apply to the current situation. You can number the Fronts and see which of them rears its ugly head in your game.