Only if you take a restrictive view of what a GM is. It's indisputably a role playing game, though. You play roles, and it's a game - dead simple.
I'll go and be a bit of a bastard, and rely upon my Coke Pickles argument - if Coca Cola started selling pickles in cans branded Coca Cola, of the same size and shape as Coke cans, would we be eating pickles or drinking Coke?
If we do improv theatre, and roll a dice to select who gets what role, it's improved theatre or role - playing? We play roles, and it's technically a game.
Actually, I think I am rather less - restrictive about GM's role, then AW and the school of design it comes from. See, ironically, this all goes back to perhaps one of the most grog arguments - is a GM a "God", or should he be just a referee for the rules? Except now it's not about the emulation mechanics, but storytelling mechanics.
And you know, I could just don't give a damn about the case of misinterpreted game genre identity. People have fun playing it - grand. But the recent pushing down the throat an idea that this is how RPGs SHOULD be, that this is the One True Way we had always waited for, that this solves the problem with GMing, that this is where you can be a GM without any need for training, that this is where the players have true control over decisions of their characters, that this are the RPGs where there's no railroading...while it is for me debatable if they are RPGs at all, is what gets my panties in a twist.
But Rince, thats EXACTLY what the author suggests all over the text. Eg:
Are you sure youve read the game text, man ?
I am pretty positive, yes. And that's RPG 101 - hardly a discovery, but good point, actually.
Then, after the author wrote that, he goes on about:
ALWAYS SAY
• What the principles demand (as follow).
• What the rules demand.
• What your prep demands.
• What honesty demands.
Apocalypse World divvies the conversation up in a strict and
pretty traditional way. e players’ job is to say what their
characters say and undertake to do, first and exclusively; to say
what their characters think, feel and remember, also exclusively;
and to answer your questions about their characters’ lives and
surroundings. Your job as MC is to say everything else: everything
about the world, and what everyone in the whole damned
world says and does except the players’ characters.
Always be scrupulous, even generous, with the truth. e players
depend on you to give them real information they can really use,
about their characters’ surroundings, about what’s happening
when and where. Same with the game’s rules: play with integrity
110 - APOCALYPSE WORLD and an open hand. e players are entitled to the full benefits
of their moves, their rolls, their characters’ strengths and
resources. Don’t chisel them, don’t weasel, don’t play gotcha.
If you’re playing the game as the players’ adversary, your
decision-making responsibilities and your rules-oversight
constitute a conflict of interests. Play the game with the players,
not against them.
What the rules demand? What the honesty demands? But I, the GM, are the rules. I am the honesty. Sometimes you will NOT know everything that will happen once you do something - Hercules in Disney movie didn't exactly know that the result of catching the disk would be that he'd collapse the village's agora. If the heroes meet a bunch of strangers in the desert, approaching them may result in shooting - and if the heroes kill them, it may turn out this had been an important diplomatic caravan from another town. But there's no way to know that. Hells - if they shoot someone, unless they later chop their heads off, they won't be 100% sure if they are dead or not. It's a piece of advice I picked up from my years of Call of Cthulhu - always stick to describing what characters see/feel/hear - what they know. No more, no less. I sometimes hid certainly modifiers from players, that will result on basis of their descriptions - sometimes to hinder them. But more often, to give them a pleasant surprise - they described how they aim for the orc's chieftain's head, I give them a +1 modifier for description to roll, as well as double damage if they roll really well without that modifier.
If AW is an RPG, it's one with GM's role very, very castrated.
And that's something I won't approve. Because as I had said countless times - people will be dicks, no matter the set of rules. Don't play with douchebags, and don't expect a set of rules to fix them - it'll be an illusion, which will shatter, sooner or later. If you don't trust the guy that GMs to give you supercool experience, that he will cheat you out of it one way or the other - don't play with him.