Neitherworld Frustrations

The more I work on the multiple-player/one-character model for Neitherworld, the more I become convinced that it isn’t feasible to meet all of my gameplay goals for that model. At this point, I am fairly convinced that I cannot write a game in which all of the players portray the same character unless either (1) the players take competitive roles toward one another or (2) there are constantly players who are sitting on the sidelines (though this might rotate). Neither of those are appealing to me. The third alternative was to share the GM-role between players who would otherwise be on the sidelines, but this isn’t a playstyle that I’d be likely to enjoy, and I also suspect that it would devolve into (1).