So...your party's characters don't care about share balancing? That's quite unusual IME.
Their shares are balanced when its divided for XP.
In theory. In practice, some players would use the Caller role to in effect play everyone else's characters for them at different times.
That's no more an argument against the Caller than "Viking hat" or "mother-may-I" is an argument against DM-based resolution.
You're talking in theory, but I'm talking in practice. That doesn't happen because a) the way I explain the Caller explicitly rules this out, and b) the players have their own free will, and don't let that happen, and c) I've never seen anyone do that, but if I did I, the DM, would say, "That's Player B's character, let him decide what he's going to do."
Er...how is that possible?
Because the Caller is not the party leader. As I've said and demonstrated by example repeatedly in the thread. When people want to do their own thing, they tell the Caller what they are going to do. He or she doesn't have to agree, he or she just has to tell the DM what the people are doing. The Caller's role is a procedural one to keep things orderly for the DM on a meta-level of being at the table.
So the Caller has to repeat what the DM just heard from the player? OK, I get it....but at the same time don't get it...
In that particular case he doesn't
have to, but it's good practice.
If I'm running a dungeoncrawl or a hexcrawl, there's a bit of administrative work I'm doing from turn to turn. I'm keeping track of time, rolling wandering monsters, refamiliarizing myself with what lies up ahead, if it's online I may be calling up the statblocks of upcoming monsters. I can listen to my players talk to the Caller while I'm doing all this, and even act on what they say. Oh, the thief is going to be moving silently up the corridor? Better ready some d10s for the check. Oh, Player B is splitting from the party and going down this other corridor? Better recheck my notes for that passage. I'm already figuring out the sequence I'm going adjudicate in. Once the players have decided on their individual actions, and informed the Caller, I'm ready to go.
I didn't think the Caller could state individuals' actions, just those of the party as a whole - meaning the party has to act as a unit for this to work.
If the party was always acting as a unit, I wouldn't need a Caller. Telling me which corridor the party has decided to go down is the least useful thing the Caller does.
If playing in person, the player would pass the DM a note (which may or may not be blank, just to stir up some paranoia). Online, we use the 'whisper' function.
And this would work just fine with a Caller.
Sorry, but to me any system that relies on group-think tends to force people into the roles of sheep going along with the herd. And that's what this is: there would seem to be a requirement that agreement be reached before the Caller can make a call for the party's action.
Nope, no "going with the herd." No agreement required. Which is to say, my group tends to play cooperatively, as a team. So when they are in a dungeon, there's typically discussion until an agreement is come to about what the team is going to do. But that's not a function of the Caller; they do the same thing when out of the dungeon and there is no Caller. Players still go off and do their own thing when they want to.
While I understand that's not how it's supposed to work, I can't see any situation in which this isn't in the end exactly how it would function. The Caller would simply end up taking charge of player discussions by default, if for no other reason than to try to determine just what is to be "called" at any given time, and it's a very short step from that to player-wrangler and table leader.
Two things actually happen in practice. 1) Once players are used to playing with a Caller, the Caller doesn't have to determine what is to be called. The player's are engaged, and with each turn they have their own ideas of what they want to do, which they immediately tell the Caller. Online, the Caller may ask each player in turn, but that's only to avoid cross-talk and confusion in the video chat. 2) When there is a discussion to be had, and/or a decision to be made as a group, it is the outgoing and extroverted players that lead the discussion, whether they are the Caller or not. We rotate the Caller, so I've seen this in action many times.
When you make it clear to the Caller and the other player's that the Caller is not any kind of leader, people quickly stop treating them as one.