VV: That’s pretty sneaky. Maybe a little dirty, too, but with the right game it could be a lot of fun.

As a GM I have found that this can be used to my advantage. If one of the players is the leader of the party (and I agree with Telas that 9 out of 10 times that same person is the player leader) and he or she insists on a certain action I might roll the dice to see if another PC detects something the others do not. I’ll then slip a note to the player of that PC and observe what happens. It doesn’t take long before the party starts listening to the more informed PC and not the party leader.

Granted, this is a lowly tactic if abused but sometimes the party leader turns into an order giver. The other players’ will start giving me clues via body language that they are tired of being bossed around by another PC. So I will do something along these lines to take the wind out of the party leader’s sails just enough to restore balance without having to make him or her lose face through direct confrontation. It is a gentle (well, somewhat gentle) nudge to get the party working together again.

It is using metagaming to my advantage (i.e. – I don’t try to hide my note passing but I don’t flaunt it either), but I’m willing to manipulate the group in order to keep it from tearing itself apart.

In a group with nine players, we’ve also found that the leader having a “right hand man” is often useful. (In some ways, the player leader is a “right hand man” for the GM, as the article states. We’ve simply carried that another step.) For example, if the group decides they need a really complex trick, it’s not uncommon to divide into two groups of characters (players stay all in the room), each one led by one of the two tricksy players.

The players are so comfortable with these roles now that they never play characters that violate them. (And we make “social skills” matter. So the character abilities must back up the role.) One lady may plan anything from a canine knight to an erratic bard to a monkey-like rogue to a drunken ex-sailor. However, she is always a character that can play “good cop” and take the secondary lead for tactics guy.

Finally, and this is the really strange part, we have two players that never take the player lead in anything–except that they know who all the good leads are, and always back them up. In effect, they are the self-appointed “party cohesion” leads. And they too always play characters that can plausibly serve that role.

Scott: What annoyed you from your Vampire session (having your own actions narrated) would probably annoy me, too. It might have worked if it had been discussed in advance, but that’s still very sticky territory.

IME, the party and player leader roles are almost always synonymous, although I can see the player leader act a ‘first sergeant’ to the party leader’s ‘captain’. “He gives the orders; I make sure they’re carried out.” (It’s not a perfect analogy, but still…)

I think you’re onto something with “those who like to lead, lead”.

Finally, we tend to lead as we like to be led, and vice-versa. We had a party leader who was a bit of a hardass, and when the roles were reversed, he was most comfortable being told exactly what to do. It was a real learning experience.

It mostly worked (he was trying to power through a tangent that didn’t interest us as players), but I was annoyed when his directions to the GM included my character’s actions. (I didn’t fight it, since I was a little off last night anyway, but it did detract from my enjoyment of the game. I’ll nip it in the bud next time if it crops up again.)

On the character level, our group tends to resist having a dedicated leader. It does make it more complicated– we’ve lost long periods to planning that would have been better if we’d just gotten on with play– but we’re not very willing to play leader and followers in game. (I suspect it’d work out fine if we agreed to plan OOC, and just have the leader present the plan in the game world– we don’t want to dump the actual planning all in one person’s lap.)

I think this is tied to two things. One is that those who step up to be the leader LIKE to be leaders. But it is equally true that most other people enjoy HAVING a leader. This is a phenomenon that I feel is independent of gaming; it is one that is more universally applicable to most social groups. And I would imagine that generally the player leader often steps out and leads outside the game as well.