Any DMs here ever have an assistant DM?

[+5 Keyboard!]

Yes, it's my preferred method of DMing actually. I've seen it called Logic DM too, especially if the 2nd DM is tasked with answering and researching the harder rules questions.

I ran a 5 year long campaign this way with my Co-DM and I working on plots and NPCs together. He tended to story-tell better but I had a great view of the ongoing plot. We are a great team. Pity he had to move away.

That's great! Seems like this type of thing is/was more common than I thought. I suppose actually finding someone to Co-DM, be a Caller or Assistant DM (take your pick) that you shared the right gaming chemistry with would be the hard part.

 

[Raloc]

I'm doing this with a friend in a current campaign. Initially, I had a lot of hidden depth in the campaign, and his PC was the only one finding it. Due to the nature of his char, he decided his char would ICly not share much of it. Over time this sort of screwed with the other players, as they were missing a lot of the plot. The one player got so much more of the overall plot that we ended up making his char into a pseudo-NPC. He still goes with the party, and plays his char as a PC, but he also helps me run some NPCs and prepare the session. Having an ADM is a life saver, and it adds a lot of flavor to the game.

 

[Umbran]

My games don't generate enough rules-questions to require a DM dedicated to them.

I've been parat of GM-teams before, but only for larger games (a dozen or more people playing Paranoia in one session, for example). In these cases, rules-lookup wasn't an issue - merely having extra people ot process plaery actiosn in parallel was the real win.

It takes a whole lot of attention 9and trust) to run a combat that involves 15 players and 3 GMs, and manage to get it all straight at the end, let me tell you.

 

[takyris]

I had a buddy who tracked initiative, and another buddy who, in very large combats, was the "squib tracker" -- the guy who had a database of hit points for the fifty-odd minor monsters that were one maximized cone of cold away from death in the big fights.

It really helped things a lot. As the DM, I want to worry about the balor and the half-dragon fiendish displacer beast with the advanced hit dice. I don't want to worry about Orc 17. Orc 17 is just there to let the PCs feel cool, and if his stats are identical to those of Orcs 1-16, and I can give the AC, the hit points, the attack bonuses, and the saves to a buddy to put 'em in a database, life is good. He just hits a button for "Roll Reflex Save for All", and then applies damage appropriately. Heck, I think at one point he had a system that let me tell him, "15d6 damage, Ref 17 half," and he could type that in and one-button it. Then he'd just tell me which ones died.

 

[replicant2]

I have an "assistant DM" who feeds me bon-bons and refills my drinks. If he's slow to do either, I threaten to whack him about the head and shoulders with a copy of Ptolus, whose threatening weight and size serves as a sufficient motivational tool.

 

[+5 Keyboard!]

I have an "assistant DM" who feeds me bon-bons and refills my drinks. If he's slow to do either, I threaten to whack him about the head and shoulders with a copy of Ptolus, whose threatening weight and size serves as a sufficient motivational tool.

LOL. That book is lethal, man! Be careful.

 

[dfan]

We usually do play-by-chat, which means it is really easy for non-players to drop in and watch the proceedings. Often one of these people will end up doing rules clarifications while the GM is busy. It works out great. I think doing this kind of thing face-to-face would be harder, since it would be tougher for the assistant to stay interested; with chat, you can multitask and just glance over every couple of minutes to see if anything needs attention.

 

[Galethorn]

Well, I've been both the organizer and actual GM for most games I've been involved in, but I've also done a game which was co-GMed (I'd do one session/adventure, then the other guy would do the next one, and then I'd do the next one, and so on), and, when one of my usual players GMed his first games, I was sort of the 'rules assistant.'

As well, I've just handed over the campaign I recently started to one of my usual players, but I've been helping generate stock NPCs and so on, and I'm the 'setting GM' to some extent (but I've made it known that he can do whatever he wants to the 'status quo' of the setting).

 

[Bad Paper]

I had a co-DM once. He was handy for keeping track of initiative, researching rules, writing down every thing each entity did each round, etc. Now I push those tasks down to the players, but I love having a helper.

I walked into his game once, and he put me to work as one of the major thugs mid-combat, because he was too busy putting out little fires here and there. He appreciated my skill in using all of a creature's abilities, and this thing had quite a list.

After I left, his players said, "Dan's mean." <flex>

 

[Torm]

I have occasionally had players run one or more of the bad guys in combat - usually when, for whatever reason, their character is separated from the party during the combat and the player is unlikely to have anything to do, otherwise.

Back when we were both in junior high, my cousin and I spent almost all of a week when both of us were visiting our grandmother's house working on our own campaign world. I still mine those notes from time to time for ideas, and sometimes some of those elements get worked in spontaneously while I'm at the table. So from a certain point of view, my cousin is ALWAYS my co-DM.

(And yes, this line of reasoning carried out to its logical conclusion could lead one to think that Mr. Arneson and Mr. Gygax are co-DM to ALL of us. And that is kinda cool, and also probably not what you were looking for at all. )