Round-Robin Campaign

[DaveStebbins]

Our D&D campaign has been a "shared world" for 20+ years now.

It's a fairly loose-knit campaign; rather than a long serial storyline, it's more episodic. A particular DM might run a one-shot adventure that lasts an evening, or an entire series of adventures over the course of many sessions -- it all depends on what the DM's whims are.

We've always encouraged people to try their hand at DMing; some try it once and say "never again", some never want to try it, and some become part of the "regular rotation". I started out as just a player in this group; I then started to DM occasionally, and am now the group's primary DM.

We've always had one DM who was the "core" DM; that's the person who tends to set the standards for treasure, XP awards, etc. However, that "control" has never been terribly formal.

This sounds very close to what my primary group has been doing for the past 15 years. We share the world and enjoy picking up threads and using NPCs left behind by the previous DM. We'll rotate DMs, each one doing a complete adventure, so it will be several sessions (sometimes a dozen or more) with one DM before we move to whoever wants to be next. Considering that this group only plays once a month, it can take a while. I just finished running a 3E update of the desert of desolation which took over a year. Now I'll probably be able to play for a year or two before it falls back to me to DM again.

 

[LostSoul]

I have done this before, although the campaign didn't last too long. (One of the players moved away.) It was a lot of fun. The party changed size when the DM's PC left. It was pretty cool.

 

[Haltherrion]

I played a rotating GMs campaign for a about a year. It worked out ok, but not great. There were ALOT of loose threads, b/c every new GM would ignore the parts of the prior week's game that didn't interest him, so it was hard to keep a coherent storyline going. There was a constant parade of new NPCs and new settings as everybody wrote new adventures. Our group had some very different personalities in it, and that's the real reason it didn't work out for us.

We've done it for the last three campaigns. We get a similar feel- works okay but not great. Lots of loose threads.

It is really hard to develop a deep plot and a common theme across multiple refs. On the other hand, if you have several people who want to ref and not enough game time to try multiple simultaneous campaigns, it is a reasonable compromise, which is why we do it. Not my preferred approach but better than leaving out a would be ref.

For a while we tried multiple campaigns but we got back to each campaign so infrequently that things kind of sputtered out.

If you do roundrobin refereeing, I would suggest longer stints in the chair, at least one full blooded scenario of 2-5 sessions per ref. These days, we actually go about 6 to 8 months per ref before switching. It allows for more complicated arcs but gives a ref a break about the time he might be getting tired of refing.

 

[Fedifensor]

Thanks for all the tips, everyone. The one thing I'm still working on is a suggested GP award for DM's who don't use their character in the adventure they run. I'll update this thread (or start a new one) as developments occur.

 

[Caius]

I've never thought of trying something like that. It's a really good concept and I will certainly bring it up at my next session.

My boyfriend and I usually go back and forth DM'ing games, although he does a whole lot more than I do. But the group will be starting the adventure path from dungeon magazine in a session or so once we finish this campaign up, so it would seem like a perfect chance if people wanted to try DM'ing.

 

[Haltherrion]

The one thing I'm still working on is a suggested GP award for DM's who don't use their character in the adventure they run.

We give the ref's PC full XP, whether the PC is in the session or not. Refereeing takes a lot of work; no one seems to mind giving them max XP.

 

[Fedifensor]

We give the ref's PC full XP, whether the PC is in the session or not. Refereeing takes a lot of work; no one seems to mind giving them max XP.

Actually, that's the plan for XP, as mentioned in my earlier post. The problem is gold - how much gold do you give a character when the player is DMing? Do you hand out the average of the GP earned by the other players (encourages a DM to give out more loot)? Do you give a set value based on the character's level (punishes a DM who runs a loot-heavy module)? I still haven't come up with a satisfactory solution...

 

[Haltherrion]

Actually, that's the plan for XP, as mentioned in my earlier post. The problem is gold - how much gold do you give a character when the player is DMing? Do you hand out the average of the GP earned by the other players (encourages a DM to give out more loot)? Do you give a set value based on the character's level (punishes a DM who runs a loot-heavy module)? I still haven't come up with a satisfactory solution...

Ah, yes, that is a problem. No perfect solutions there, I think. We just wing it as events warrant but a few schemes come to mind:

*convert all items to gold value, sum and divide by number of PCs. Ref gets that much wealth to use for money or items.
*do the above just for the non-magic items. Have the other refs determine appropriate magic item award for the refs PC (if any).

we essentially do the second one above although we aren't very formal about it.

 

[jmucchiello]

Actually, that's the plan for XP, as mentioned in my earlier post. The problem is gold - how much gold do you give a character when the player is DMing? Do you hand out the average of the GP earned by the other players (encourages a DM to give out more loot)? Do you give a set value based on the character's level (punishes a DM who runs a loot-heavy module)? I still haven't come up with a satisfactory solution...

Are you saying the DM gives out gold to individual characters? IME distributing gold is an in character activity the neither requires or involves the DM unless NPCs are involved. The DM should have a DMPC who goes on the missions but that he doesn't over play. That character is just as much a part of the party as any other member and should receive shares in the same manner as any other party member.

 

[jmucchiello]

We run our normal campaign like this. We play weekly and no one can run a weekly game for long at our advanced stage of commitments So we use to run three campaigns simultaneously, trading the DM chair every month or so. Well, our advanced age also affects our memories and we would constantly have problems with some saying "Why don't you X?" where X is some ability that player's character in a different game has. (And this didn't just happen during the change over weeks. Remembering an ability the player has two DMs ago would also happen.)

Anyway, once the group was moaning about this. I bowed out of the DMing loop, a second DM's game came to conclusion and we were left with one DM who was well aware he couldn't do it for more than a few months without burning out. So he asked we other two DMs to join him in making his current story arc more epic and taking control of parts of the story. Much of the early work involve characters seeking macguffins to help the war effort. (The epic story involves extradimensional invaders who have unified the evil humanoid races against the good. The invaders have a +8 LA and eventually their emperor-god will visit our fair faerun to kill off a god or two and declare himself our emperor.)

There are side tasks that allow us to put the war in the background so the characters can do their own thing. But once the war goes into high gear, the macguffin chase will continue in earnest until Lathander dies. (The invaders don't like the sun.) Then the game will turn nasty as the underdark no longer need be under.

In any case, the original DM is in charge of the war. The other DM is in charge of macguffins to make the party able to survive. And I am in charge of all of the external groups who might join the war on the invaders side. So far the Zhents have been contained, a group of demons are on the chopping block next. My next group should be the underdark forces. (Some of them don't want to be ruled by the invaders any more than the sureface dwellers and others see the invaders as comrades. Whom do you trust?)

Ultimately, a clear picture of where the campaign is going it needed (I think) to make this kind of multi-DM campaign work. Because we all know what the invaders are, one DM won't give out an item that makes the next DM's job impossible.