I've got a group of 4 or 5 people who would like to play this, but no one really wants to GM the game, we'd all like to be PC's. We are all new to the game some new to RPG's in general. Is it possible to play EotE without a GM? I've heard it can be done, but does anyone have any experience with this and any advice?

Thanks in advance.

First, be welcome!

Wow... an incredible task here, almost imposible but, a group of friends tried to to a really peculiar session where everyone put on scene "facts" by turn creating an story. A GM shared experience.

I never played as my friends did but, it could be interesting. So, my first suggestion is look for a GM, if not, try this other option. Maybe also you can just only read the facts on the adventure (every time a different one) and follow the pre-made Adventure books.

Hope I helped

I can't quite imagine how this would work. Even if all you wanted to do as a party is get into a bar fight, somebody would have to be responsible for setting up the opposition and maybe throwing in a few surprises...

I'd suggest taking turns. If there's 4 or 5 of you, then 75 to 80% of the time you'll be a player, and only have to "suffer" a small amount. And one of you might grow to like it...

Thanks for the feedback and ideas. I'd just happen to be listening to the firs EotE Order 66 podcast and they mentioned that it might work to have no GM, so I thought I'd see if anyone had done it.

Might also look at Mythic GM Emulator.

I'd suggest round-robin-ing GMs mission to mission. Everyone gets a chance to play that way.

Thanks Daeglan, I might check out that GM emulator it sounds like even if we get a GM it might be helpful for us.

Back in July or August, I remember people talking about this and someone mentioned a virtual gm book... Mythic? Mythus? Something along those lines. I'm a little stymied by searching on this forum but I'm sure if you look back at some of the threads from summer 2013, you'll find those messages.

I was a complete n00b so I could not imagine a way you could replace the GM. Now that I've been playing for over 8 months, I am an EXPERT!! Forget about the fact that lack of a rulebook in pdf format means I can't read the rules so I never have. There's no reason a lack of knowledge should stand in the way of my expertise! As an expert, I can now say that I was right the first time! I still can not figure out how you could get something to do all the things my GM does anywhere near as well as he does it.

I've done a lot of improvised theatre in my time, and I know that it's certainly possible to create both short-form (scenes) and long-form (episodes) collaboratively in that context. I've not yet played any GM-less RPGs, but there are several out there.

My advice would be to seek out one of these GM-less, collaborative story-telling role-playing games, then after reading the rules and a bit of playtesting, try to find a way to blend their story-telling mechanics with the EOTE system.
I think the narrative dice that are so integral to the EOTE experience would really make this a lot easier than with more rules-crunchy systems.
I don't know how much work would be involved, but I'm pretty sure it should be do-able if you and your friends are a bit clever, able to work together to create a story, and willing to accept some bumps along the way.

I'd really love to hear how you approached it and what kind of results you get, as I love collaborative story-telling and I also love not being the GM
So please do keep me posted on your experiece!

Here are some resources that might help you (both rule-sets are quite cheap for the pdf files) -
Fiasco - http://www.bullypulpitgames.com/games/fiasco/
-Bought this a while back, have read the rules but haven't played yet
Cosmic Patrol - http://www.cosmicpatrol.com/?page_id=2

-Saw this at my FLGS (looks really cool), but had already spent all my moneys on SW stuff

Fiasco play-example video with Wil Wheaton -

Good luck, and may the Force be with you!

Thanks everyone for the feedback, I think we may try a combination of things. Maybe start with a pre-made adventure, then a round robin of GMing, with a break of trying to use the emulator in a collaborative story form every once in a while. That way we can see what methods work best for us as a group. I appreciate all the comments, ideas and resources.

Our group has 2 players and 2 GMs, everyone has a character. From our experience someone has to be the opposition.

Our group switches off GMing duties between players. For the most part it works pretty well. It gives us the ability to come up with cool stories, and run them. At the same time, everybody gets a chance to play.

You do need to set a few ground rules. Mainly, be clear when there's an NPC or a plot point that you want the other GM's to leave alone, but if done right a shared universe/gm can work very well. Whjen you're running the game, your character becomes an NPC for the session(s). I generally try to keep my character in the background when I'm running it, so that the players can be the stars, but will bring her out if her skill set is needed to make the occasional roll. Having your character as an NPC can also help to nudge the plot along.

I think it would be a lot easier then trying to go GMless.

Thanks, for the advice on round robin GMing, I think that's probably how we will end up going, there may be a one or two players who don't GM, but with two or three of us doing the duties and hopefully being able to play our own characters enough we should be good.

I was just interested in the idea of collaborative GMing that got mentioned in the Order 66 podcast I had listened to. With time and a better understanding of the game we still might eventually explore that.

If you're going to go with no GM, play a game built without a GM in mind. Someone beat me to the Fiasco recommendation, but another fun one is Microscope. In Microscope, you're all collaboratively building a timeline for a world of your own imagining. You can zoom in on specific scenes and take the roles of characters (whose existence and role you dictate on the spot), or zoom out and describe things that happen over decades or centuries. Play goes around the table and each player gets the chance to have absolute narrative authority. My group had a lot of fun with it.

This is my experience as a GM I wanted to run Shadowrun and have been for a good long while now (almost a year). I created a NPC to help fill the gap that my players lacked. It was made a bit on the powerful side but it still made a balanced NPC as it had severe limitations. That was the original thought behind the NPC just something to fill the gap. As time went my players gained more experience became more rounded and I decided that it was time to let the NPC fall to the wayside. My players wouldn't let me! I don't know where the attachment came from but now I had to actually remake the NPC into the new edition and make her legal. So I get to 'play' a bit as a plyer and still GM. That my story now here is my advice.

If you guys really want to play and not round robin do as I suggested. Make a legal character but play it as an NPC that fills a niche your group may not have filled. A good example of this would be Doctor or Mechanic if you don't have one of those. Your players will get shot and if they don't their equipment will. Having someone around to fix it and them is a godsend to most players. Now you could also fill the role of pilot or driver if your players are ground based or space based and don't have a qualified pilot. There is also a podcast called Dice Heroes that might be of help as they have a player playing 2 characters and one of those is more of an NPC.

My two decicreds (not even worth 2 creds)

Thanks Bull30548. I've actually been designing a few characters to use as sort of guide NPCs for the plot I have in mind characters I might be able to plug-in as needed depending on what the group composition ends up looking like. I'm getting the feeling from the players that I'm going to have to be GMing at least for the start. Others might decide to take a turn later, but at the moment the pressure seems to be on me.