Hey Now! Why no Co-host?

I've been watching a lot of the Larry Sanders show on Netflix Instant Watch lately and it occurred to me that it might be nice to have a co-host when I'm GM'ing games. I often try to relate both GM and general role-playing skills to real-life skills. That's not to say that story-telling isn't a worthwhile endeavor, but nobody really makes their living being a GM. So I'm stuck spending my days trying to figure out how I can take skills I already have and apply them to my hobby. Everyone says improv improves role-playing skills, but I've found that interview skills are also quite useful in the world of role-playing.

Anyway, I digress. Obviously I've never hosted a talk show (late-night or otherwise) in my life, but I like them a lot. From the Daily Show to Conan to Colbert (ok, I have a very narrow taste in late-night talk shows), they're entertaining in a remarkable every-night, reliable kind of way. The Larry Sanders show is a fictionalized depiction of the rigors of daily entertainment combined with the dry comedy of Seinfield. It's as good as you might have heard.

Anyway, my favorite character every episode is Jeffrey Tambor's Hank. Hank is the co-host to the host Larry Sanders. Of course Jeffrey Tambor is a genius. His Hank character is the Ed McMahon we all think of putting his face on any piece of crap they try to sell on TV. He's sleazy in a lovable way. More importantly, Hank is a fantastic co-host. He's always there in the background, and they talk a lot about how Hank's main job is to keep his eyes on Larry and step in if the guest he's interviewing is just not with it or the joke Larry just told fell flat. Hank jumps right in with self-deprecating comedy gold.

Why don't we have co-hosts in role-playing? In traditional games, the GM definitely fills the role of host to his player guests. I think a lot of the time Chuck and I will subconsciously fill the co-host role when we're playing in each other's games. We both know the work the other person put into the planning, we know that sometimes GM'ing can be hard, and we know that the story (or is it show?) must go on even when it hits a road bump. We want the group to be successful at playing the game, so we'll jump in, be a little more pro-active in our decision making and moves towards the direction the GM was hoping we'd go.

How come games don't have specific rules for this kind of player/GM hybrid? Far too often we get stuck in our traditional roles of GM and player. The line is stark and you sit firmly on one side or the other. Why? When you look at games like Fiasco or Remember Tomorrow - GMless Games - the line completely disappears and everyone's responsible for everything.

But maybe we don't have to go so far to take some pressure off the GM to be the group's entertainer. Why not designate a third role into your game group - Game Master, Player, and Co-host? Make it work mechanically as well as just in theory and things start to get real interesting. Of course I could be missing it, maybe there are games out there that do this already? I'd love to hear about them!