The amount of times that I've brought up how GMing is not a position that most ttrpgs treat as another player, but rather as a referee, and how I find that a problem, since you're forcing someone to skip playing for the other people to play, and Ive gotten the answer of "why dont you just rotate the GM position?"
THAT SOLVES NOTHING, sure, it makes it better. Its not the same friend skipping playing every week, but someone still has to skip playing.
Most modern ttrpgs ive seen either treat the GM as a referee that is supposed to follow the rules, or as an auteur that turns the game the players are going through into a performance. One is a computer and one is an artist, neither of them are gamers.
Older ttrpgs may treat the GM as an oppositional force to the players, but still gives them total power over the game, leading to the classic "rocks fall, everyone dies" situation.
GMs dont have a game to play, they don't have a win condition or lose condition, and they don't have obstacles set by the system to make reaching those conditions a game.
Draw steel and Daggerheart do have metacurrencies that serve as obstacles, which could be a great starting point. Draw Steel's Malice feels more to me like a difficulty dial players can shift, with the GM being only able to choose which Malice abilities to use, but Im also of the opinion that GMs shouldnt be left alone during combat, I make flowcharts for the monsters I make so that the GM can at least have a baseline of what the monster wants to do in every situation, and ideally Malice would be included there (the GM could always ignore it, but the flowchart is meant to mimic the decission process of a monster, even at the detriment of their combat skill if needed). Daggerheart's Fear does have a bit more variety, but its also very similar in its limitations.
Ideally the GM's game would be independent but entwined with the players' game, without being confrontational.
