Did your group have only one DM?

[jdrakeh]

I've heard the claim that the norm in 1e days was for a group to have only 1 DM and for the players to be ignorant of what was between the covers of the DMG. This is completely opposite of my experience, so, I'm wondering which was the norm. At least of EN World gamers.

I came into AD&D 1e in 1995 or so, though the guys that I was playing with were dyed in the wool grognards. We has one regular DM (Q/James), though my friend John served as an alternate of sorts and I became a protege after a fashion (being gifted with a copy of the AD&D 1e DMG by John to puruse in my free time).

When the primary DM's campaign wrapped up, the alternate would step up to the plate and roles would be reversed. That said, games in this group tended to run in cycles of two to three years (when first joining, I sat in on the last few sessions of John's campaign and then the next three years or so was spent playing in Q's campaign).

 

[ivocaliban]

I was the sole purchaser and thus the sole DM for my gaming group early on and remains so to this day. This idea of more than one DM is a rather alien concept to me, but I'd certainly enjoy playing once and a while.

 

[drothgery]

Never played 1e, but in 2e, we had two guys that DMed (and ran different games in alternate weeks). And the only reason we didn't all have copies of the DMG was because we were all starving college students at the time; we certainly all looked through it.

In 3e, with a completely different group of people, we've had two guys as long-term DMs, and I ran a short SWSE game.

 

[Drowbane]

Negative.

1e: I had two DMs, who played off of each other's styles.
2e: 3/4s of the group DMed at one point or another. We had 4-9 members, depending on who could make it after school.
3e: multiple DMs within each group I've been in.

 

[Scurvy_Platypus]

When I was living in Reno (Nevada) back about 20 years ago, I was involved with 3 different game groups. The first one was what introduced me to the hobby, Red Box D&D. Nobody else had ever GMed, and nobody else ever did.

The second group had one guy that ran things (went by the name of Galen), and although there were a bunch of us in the group, only one other person ever ran a game, and that was towards the end of Galen's group.

Third group, I started to see some variety, and realized that it was "ok" to be in more than one group, it wasn't cheating on your DM. It was where I was first introduced to Beyond the Supernatural, and the fact that rpgs didn't only have to be about fantasy games.

Since then, I can only think of 2 or maybe 3 groups that were like that. I've lived in Washington, Colorado, California, and now New Jersey since starting to play rpgs in Reno. At least in terms of my experience, I'd say it's a rare thing.