I love tabletop role-playing games. I discovered them towards the end of my high school years, and through college, I was obsessed with them. Just sitting at a table and telling an exciting adventure with your friends and rolling dice over who gets to decide what happens next. I've been exposed to fire breathing dragons, eldritch horrors and battles that decide the fate of nations. Eventually, I even learned how to run the games myself so all I needed to do was invite some friends to meet and I'd run whatever game they wanted for them. Of course the most popular choice was Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition. They'd show up if I offered to do all the work! I'd work on the setting, play all the NPCs, come up with a plot and even have tiny hooks in it to get each of their characters invested.

For ten years, I have been harshly punished for it.

I'm what you call a forever GM, and apparently there are a lot of us. When we don't offer to GM, the game doesn't happen because nobody else volunteers, so we've just been psychologically conditioned to assume we're running the game every single time. We don't have the luxury of friend groups that rotate storytellers. Not everyone gets to have those. Rewarding as it is to see everyone enjoying themselves over a story you put together for them, it's also exhausting and sometimes thankless.

At one point, I just burned out. It got to a point where I wasn't looking forward to sessions anymore. It felt like a chore having to come up with more content for them to play through, whether it's pulling it out of a campaign suppliment or coming up with it on my own. As time went by, players got more and more demanding. Please include this extra ruleset in the game for me because it fits my character more! Can I play this class from this supplement and this race from this other supplement? Please read my several page backstory and make sure to integrate it into the plot! My character didn't have much to do this session, what gives? As much as I want to put my foot down and play two-hour one-shots with pre-generated characters just to make things simpler for me, my pride as a storyteller won't let me. I want to let my players play what they want. As a forever GM, I just want to keep on giving. Eventually it got to a point where I just didn't have anything left. I was miserable.

A year passed with no tabletop-roleplaying games. I tried getting back into it a few times, but I'd run one game and then I'd get tired. I started to wonder if I just wasn't cut out for being the kind of person that does this. Inspiration struck me one day and I began to casually come up with an RPG system I wanted to try. There wasn't anything like it that I could find so I thought I'd make my own.

I called it One of Us Will Die; a working title of course, there's no way I was gonna use a ridiculously long title on the final product. In this system, players would only have to fill in the blanks and answer questions to create their character sheets which meant I won't have to sit down with them for one hour while we cross-reference with a player's handbook. Everything they needed would just be on the character sheet. Instead of the usual combat classes, I decided to use archetypes for the characters instead of the usual combat classes because I wanted players to think about what story they wanted to tell instead of what they wanted their character to be able to do. The twist of the game was that one player would be informed from the very beginning that their character would die at the end of the story, and the object of the game for the other players was to figure out which one of them it was and have their own character die in their place. It's a strange premise, yes, but the winner of the game is the one who manages to lead their character towards a meaningful death, that and the players are on the lookout for a traitor in their midst who's goal is to rain on everyone's parade. Each archetype would be given these story goals (milestones) depending on their role and archetype so that they couldn't die, betray or save each other without hitting a few of them first.

Of course there were some other mechanics included to make the game more balanced and playable, but that was the gist of it.  The result: my issues with GMing either disappeared or became much lighter.

No more pressure to tell the story myself or help passive players keep up
We've all heard that some star players push the plot forward on their own, and I've definitely met some in my day. Most tables will have one or two, but chances are most of the players aren't gonna be like that. A lot of them really sit at the table and wait for you to give them a prompt to do something, throw a zombie or a goblin their way or give them a quest. Having a system where the players have a story to tell through their archetype and milestones to hit in order to complete it makes them more proactive. Instead of having to think of story hooks or plot points, the players create their own. Most of the effort has always gone into having to come up with stuff for characters to do but now all I need to do is sit back and occasionally ask them to role dice to determine the outcome.

Players respect their characters when they know it's their last adventure
There's a strange respect we give to people who are about to die. It seems this applies to RPG characters. A lot of players play One of Us Will Die to "win" so they assume their character is going to die or turn coat at the end of the game. Even if they don't, they will lose a part of themselves saying goodbye to a comrade. Either case, players end up motivated to tell the best story that they can, often making things happen themselves or even taking massive risks because, they know it's all going down anyway. We see them at odds with each other; we see the dramatic tension rise, and we see the layers of these characters peel off to reveal their most interesting and entertaining selves, and all I feel like I have to at this point is grab my popcorn.

No more math. No more stats.
I don't like doing math in games, let alone when I'm expected to do all of it. There's this crippling anxiety that takes over me when I'm calculating something, or I'm cross referencing rules, or figuring out exactly what this monster can do and can't get it done fast enough to avoid my players' expectant stares. It's really hard to keep track of everything when you're supposed to play out every monster in the dungeon and still deliver a compelling and unique boss fight at the end of it.

One page characters
In this game, everything players need to create their characters is written on the character sheet. I've seen beginners receive their sheet, fill it up like it's a simple form and be all set to play. When I ask them something, they just look at their sheet once and answer. No cross-referencing a handbook or anything.  If they want to cast a spell, it's there. If they want to lift that rock, everything the need is there.

Minimal Prep Session
The game is designed to generate its stories on the fly. It relies on the archetype system to create conflict and drama. If you have four players, choosing four different character archetypes, you'll have four unique stories that interact and intertwine themselves with each other. It just develops near flawlessly before your eyes to the point that the only prep I need to do are the parts I want to do. If I wanna reveal a plot twist about the villain, or if I wanna surprise them with another story development, that's just all when I feel like it. I feel like I'm playing, not working, which is something I never got from some of the other systems I've played.

I've actually been asked why One of Us Will Die even has a Director when the players do most of the work, and all I can say is, that technically it doesn't. I could've written this game without the need for one and it would have been fine, but having a Director makes players feel safe. He's more of a fellow storyteller than a babysitter and someone needs to take care of the world and its inhabitants anyway. It really is what I do best and I am proud of it. Best part is I can focus on it instead of getting burdened with the other things.

Right now, I'm in the middle of a Curse of Strahd campaign (Yes, One of Us Will Die is compatible with modules from other games) and despite the daunting reputation of this story, I look forward to every session like I'm about to watch the next episode of my favorite TV show.

My passion is back. I feel that pull to the table again, and I no longer feel burdened with the task of carrying the story on my shoulders. Will One of Us Will Die eliminate GM fatigue forever for everybody? I don't expect so, but it worked for me, and I hope it can for as many people as possible. Do I still want to run other TTRPGs? Of course! It's just nice to have a game to play every once in awhile to lessen the dread I felt before. Now that I've found my treatment, I've made it my mission to share it with as many people as possible.