Alternating DM's?

[Findecano]

Ok, me and my group has a lot of trouble deciding who gets to DM. I'll try to be modest and indicate what we're each good at accurately.

Well, there are 4 guys, but I'll call them Joey,Mark,Steve and myself.
We play 3.5, and I know most of the rules of by heart. I can improvise really quickly, so I never really prepare, I just wing it, and i'm the preffered DM so far (I think).

Joey was the one who first introduced us to D&D. Unfortunately he's a terrible DM. His combat consists of "You are hit take 3 damage". His stories are weird, have no real plot and are heavily based off anime. Solutions to his puzzles are obscure, and the possible answers are so varied we struggle, but in the end the answer is something he thinks is stunningly obvious.

Steve is the second best DM. I really don't have a problem DMing with him. We've already worked out how to fit intervals between each campaign, so we can use the same characters in two campaigns without breaking the flow. However, this is a strained approach since we both would like to have the sessions to ourselves.

Mark is the DM who knows least of the rules. He has a heavy contempt for some players, resulting in not so subtle penalties. He is also the most boring of our group unfortunately, and sees himself as quite intelligent, but he's not really.

We've been playing for a short while, around 4 sessions. We stayed up 'till 4 in the morning playing, so we got many levels (I think) (Off topic: Level 2-3 after this many sessions, is that feasible, or are we doing something wrong with the XP gain?)

Our sessions are quite erratic, and players fluctuate ( Me and Steve are always ready though.) And we have actually started new campaigns many times because me and Steve did not think a campaign was actually that long, (Should have read the DM Guide a bit closer).

Any advice resolving this, (and the rate we gain xp) would be appreciated.
And finally, our gaming group has outlawed mages, because we have a lot of trouble keeping track of spell range, damage, caster level and other stuff.

An example of a resolved problem is Bards. When we made a mistake and couldn't figure out how many spells a bard could learn, my party voted to make a houserule that Bards can get all spells for their levels to save time. I disagreed and outlawed them because I was afraid of the ramifications of unbalancing something could result in. Can we also get advice on houseruling?

Thanks. I'm pretty sure we have a lot of problems compared to most gaming groups, but I'm not sure since I don't know anyone else who plays D&D. Thanks for trawling through that mountain of whining.

EDIT: If it helps, we don't game regularly, though we try to achieve a once a week basis. None of us have the time to prepare a lot for the players.

 

[ppaladin123]

Umm....do you really want us to vote on who gets to be your DM based entirely on your account of your abilities (e.g. I am the best!)? Are you going to show the poll to your friends? Are you going to tell them that some people on the internet said that you should be the DM? Will they care?

 

[Mark]

I just finished up running a campaign and the next six weeks will see everyone else in the group getting a chance to run a game. We'll play a 3.5 Eberron D&D game, a 4E D&D game, a 1E D&D game, a Paladium RPG one-shot and something TBD before I get back into the DM chair. It's fun for everyone to have a turn.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Your account is rather skewed, and seems to come with rankings. IF you're the best, why not just be the DM then? Do the others actually WANT to do it?

See, my group now has a similar arrangement. It was 4, and I just got hoodwinked into adding a 5th. In our case, I was the one getting everything together and probably should have been the real full time DM, but realized "holy crap, I don't have the time or will to actually do this every single week." So I made it rotating DM. Me as final arbiter when just letting the current DM handle things isn't good enough or won't work.

Cause the funny thing? No one else seems to really be eager to DM either. Every time someone does t, it literally is like a favor. We're all busy and don't particularly want to prep for a game. I'd really be surprised if you declared, "Hey, I think I want to become the fulltime DM" and anyone actually challenged you for "the honor." If they thought of you as an unfair DM, then sure. But from your description, it's hard to tell if they'd have a reason to think that. In any case, poll info is not nearly enough, so I'm not voting.

Completely unnecessary:
[sblock]And I can't speak for the fifth guy yet, but of the original 4, it reminds me of your breakdown.
I'm you, basically.
"George" is the guy I also largely trust to DM well. He's actually my right-hand for developing plot, and the only other one to do main-plot related quests. Similar to Steve.
"Lagos" is similar to Mark. He can't remember the rules at all, and needs reminders of how even his own character's abilities work. No contempt, though. But he's definitely the least experienced DM.
"Alex" is I guess my Joey, though barely. He's got the most experience as DM by far, possibly more than the rest of us put together. He's been my DM many times before, and he's very good. He and I are also very similar in our views of what is balanced, so we bounce and steal houserules off each other constantly. Problem is, he's playing and running like 4 other games, so he's NEVER willing or able to be the DM. Not once so far.

Just felt like sharing. [/sblock]

 

[Nightson]

I picked Mark as a joke.

So just to throw this out there, how about you rotate the DMing job among everyone who wants to DM. Create a format that allows for easy episodic gaming. Every DM gets say two sessions for their adventure and you guys switch out, maybe you lay some threads in there for the next DM to pick up on if he wants. This also gives everyone a very large amount of prep time.

Making a houserule is different from making a temporary resolution in game. If you can't remember in game the bard thing and you need the answer then, there's nothing wrong with going what you think it is. But generally afterwards you look up the rule and you go with that for the future, and you explain away the session as a random fluke of arcane power or something.

When making houserules, you're either trying to mold the system into something that better suits your group, or patching up a mistake in the system. Both things are things that are usually easier to do after you've been playing for awhile and have a good grasp of the whole rule system.

For example, bards knowing all their spells, that's almost definitely broken. It's certainly a huge, huge buff to bards which I doubt they need in your game.

 

[jmucchiello]

Take turns. My group had 4 DMs. We would plan our games in mini-arcs. Each DM had his own world with his own characters. Every 4-5 sessions we would switch DMs. It was good because you weren't stuck playing one character for 1 year. Instead there were 4 characters you enjoyed 1 per month.

Of course that first week playing the "new" game would always result in statements like "John, magic missile the orc." To which John would reply "I would except I'm the barbarian in this game." But overall it was a good approach for over 5 years.

 

[Findecano]

I'm a bit overwhelmed by the replies. I think i'll take the suggestions that say that we should have a few campaigns. I always have trouble deciding what character path I want to go down. Me and Aran have a great campaign going, and we can easily pretend each adventure happened in a different world (judicious tweaking of history on behalf of the players).

The poll thing was put there for the sake of getting to use it. Pretty childish of me. My friends know I have posted here, but we're taking everything under advisement, not the final words. The clarification of what I should really use house-ruling for really helped, but we're not experienced enough to make fair rule changes, so I think we'll leave that out for a while.

Final problem: I talked with the other players (Excluding Mark and Joey) and they all said they had no intention whatsoever of playing in Marks campaign, and Joeys were so weird they would only play them sparingly. Joey is fine with this since he just wants to DM once in a while since he introduced us to the game. Mark however, is taking it really seriously, was withdrawn in yesterdays gaming session, and quite intentionally destroyed some of the groups tactical plans, saying he was playing in-character. He just started randomy attacking city guards on an infiltration. Is there a way to settle this, or should we just address him directly and exclude him from sessions if the problem persists?

Thanks for all the great replies!

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Well, you're basically going behind his back to make all the group's decisions, so I can kinda understandbeing upset.

And yeah, that Bard ruling is very broken. Granted, they get few spells per day to abuse it with, but they could always start getting rings of wizardry and memento magica. Or take the sublime chord class (Complete Arcane) and suddenly know the entire Bard, Sorcerer, and Wizard spell list, all able to be cast spontaneously.

 

[Gwaihir]

My group has the opposite problem - I am the only one who has any desire to DM and I'd just as soon play for a change.

We are old and married now so we only play occasionally, but several years prior (read young and single) when we played weekly, we alternated DMs roughly two weeks on two weeks off. Each player had a separate character for each campaign. Each DM played in the others campaign.

Issues I saw in this were temptings of favoritism, but all in all it worked really well for 3-4 years.

 

[Morrus]

Final problem: I talked with the other players (Excluding Mark and Joey) and they all said they had no intention whatsoever of playing in Marks campaign, and Joeys were so weird they would only play them sparingly.

By "I talked with the other players (excluding Mark and Joey)" you mean "I talked to Steve"?