Meeting Facilitation and Gaming is an absolutely fascinating post over at The 20′ by 20′ Room — “one of the problems with typical rpgs is the fact that the GM is usually the meeting facilitator for a gaming group.” I can’t believe I’ve never thought of it that way before!
GM as Meeting Facilitator
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One idea listed in the original post was to have an agenda, with (loose) time limits and intended participating players for each event. The goal is clear: keep things on-track, and make sure everyone gets some spotlight time. To me, this is all well and good but rarely works in reality: I’m not sure it’s an old saw yet, but it should be: one thing the GM can count on is that the players won’t do what he expects!
Still, perhaps there’s some happy medium between railroading the group in the direction you want and attempting the futile task of preparing for every possibility. Hmm…
brcarl, your comment about having an agenda makes me think of Primetime Adventures: In PTA, each PC has a spotlight episode (all about them), and then in every other episode they get a rating that measures how much of the attention is focused on them.
It’s a brilliant mechanic, and it might be possible to drift it to other games to accomplish something along the lines of what you’re talking about.