2 DM's. How can it work.

[Stahn Li]

Have you ever had a campaign with two DM's!

I was a dm in a campaign which is still to this date the best campaign I have ever run.

Pulling this off is not easy. It requires alot of factors failing into place, however if you can it can give your campaign alot of advantages.

1> strengths and weakenesses. Each dm can do what they are good at. simple yet effective.

2> split adventures. Pc's can venture off on there own, and not just have to sit and do nothing. You got two dm's, if you have two seperate rooms, both can play at the same time.

3>power gamers. Now rules lawyers and power gamers have to out wit two experience DM's! good luck to those suckers.

4>rehersal. Important encounters can be reheresed,leads to a better prentation.

5> a second opnion. Ever had an idea you thought was cool that feel flat on its face. Now you have another person who can tell you its stupid,or simple adjust it slightly so it will work.

6> Feedback. Your felllow DM will chew you out when you screw up a combat or play an NPC wrong. Much more aggresively than a PC.


Still this is hard to pull off. One thing that worked with me was make sure both Dm's have similar styes. Also it is important to have one DM two have ultimate authority. This doesn't have to be the better of the two DM's. I was merely the assisant DM in my campain. The other DM was ultimately in control of the greater storyline and ran alll the combats. I was the NPC expert, inventing and then playing the majority of the PC's. The main DM was a sucker, while he drew up all he maps, came up with the main plot, and ran all the combats I got to come up with all the interesting NPC's and got to roleplay them every adventure. He did all the work and I had all the fun. So what if he had the final say!

Anyway that is how it worked for me. Let me know if you have tried a similar experiment.

 

[Dimenhydrinate]

Yes I have. We did some combonation of your list. Story ideas were bounced back and fourth, refined, and bounced around somemore. We also ran different "arcs" of the campaign when we got to the ideas that we each understood better than the other one, we took turns having veto power, so there were some nifty surprises for everyone. I am more of a combat person, while my Co-DM was more role play so we also switched out in the middle of a game several times. It worked GREAT for us right up until the group fell apart because RL intruded.

 

[tmaaas]

My wife and I enjoy DMing together. I focus on the rules-related aspects, while she majors on descriptions. We both work on story/plot together.

-- tmaaas

 

[MeepoTheMighty]

Back in college when we would routinely have a dozen people playing, we considered running two seperate-but-parallel campaigns at the same time in different rooms. The two parties would be operating in the same world and would cross paths often, and would eventually end up working towards the same goal (though possibly competing against one another). We never got around to doing it, but it sounded like a fun idea.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

While I've done it before and it is great...it just doesn't fit my style of DMing. I'm very spontaneous with details and such, and I usually do best making things up on the spot and using random encounters. Its not a great thing with TWO DMs.

 

[BVB]

You don't need to add an apostrophe-s after "DM" to make it plural, merely an s by itself. An apostrophe-s is used to make a noun possessive (followed by an object) or used in the contraction of a "be" verb: "The DM's dog ate his dice," for example, or, "The DM's visiting the veterinarian now." In your case, however, it's merely, "Have you ever had a campaign with two DMs?"

 

[Tom Cashel]

BVB, the editor in me thanks you.

We are going to be starting a new 3.5 campaign in 3-4 months, with two DMs. Except our plan is to each have a character in the party, and trade the DMing chores every 1-2 sessions. Should keep everyone fresh and inspired, building a campaign piece-by-piece with another DM, each surprising the other along the way.

If you have two DMs for the same session, doesn't one have to be the assistant?

 

[drnuncheon]

We are going to be starting a new 3.5 campaign in 3-4 months, with two DMs. Except our plan is to each have a character in the party, and trade the DMing chores every 1-2 sessions. Should keep everyone fresh and inspired, building a campaign piece-by-piece with another DM, each surprising the other along the way.

That's pretty much what the wife and I are doing for our online Planescape game. I've kind of got the 'main' plot arc - the Great Modron March/Dead Gods superadventures - and she's handling all sorts of side treks and other plot arcs. Each of us has a character, and we trade off back & forth every month or so.

J

 

[Drawmack]

I played in one where one dm handled story and role-play with the other handling battles it worked out very well.

 

[babomb]

It is indeed hard to pull off. One piece of advice I would give is to clearly define duties. Once, I was a co-DM. Originally, it was intended that he would do most of the planning/running the game stuff and I would run most of NPCs and occasionally run the game if he couldn't make it or the party split up. One of the problems we had is that we didn't really communicate things very well. Often during a session I knew as little about the adventure as the players. Also, at least once the party split into two groups, so he ran in one room and I in the other. It turned out that both groups ended up in the same place, but we didn't realize it because we were in different rooms. Another problem with this is that he had a short temper. More than once he exploded over some stupid detail and left me to run a dungeon crawl he'd made that I knew nothing about. Eventually, I just ran the campaign on my own.

Later, we started another campaign and the guy I had Co-DMed with was running it again. While we were creating characters, one player decided he didn't like the character he had made and asked to co-DM. The DM agreed. That very same day, the main DM got angry at the players and stormed out. The co-DM continued running that game for about a year.

Really, the biggest problem was his temper, but the communication and poorly defined responsibilities caused problems as well.