Exp with Assistent DM's

[Harmon]

Avoid assistant GMs ask the Players to help out instead

Experience with assistant GMs- not good.

Instead I have Players play non critical NPCs.

My wife and I were talking about a mass able idea for large numbers of villians. Have each player run some of the critters. Keep an eye on things and trust your other players to keep an eye on movements. Should a dumb idea come up- "the wizard will throw his fireball at the tree off the table," then the GM steps in and targets the Players character as punishment with said spell.

Organizing your GM space very important, use post it notes to hold critical pages in books for you, take a moment, have Players look stuff up for you- "whats the range on Lightning Bolt- Jake, look that up, please," that sort of thing, it helps and it moves the gam along and everyone is involved.

 

[RangerWickett]

I'm sorry, but the premiums you have to pay to the assistant DM really cut into your profits from the game. You'd pretty much need an extra 3 or 4 players to make it worthwhile. I mean, I guess it's a nice way to be generous to newbie DMs who aren't high enough on the pay scale yet, but we all had to break into this biz on our own, so I don't really think you're helping newbie DMs by being so easy on them.

Of course, if you can trick the co-DM into paying player fees for having additional characters, things are gravy. It's a little loophole in the Bugaboo's Friends rules of order, but if you can exploit it, make sure to give them higher level characters. Load them up with magical gear that's expensive but unusable, like three thousand gray ioun stones and animal-bane nunchaku for a sorcerer. Milk the system, man.

 

[spectre72]

And a suggestion from past experience...

If you use an assistant DM

A) make sure their style is similar to your own
B) you set the guidelines for your campaign
C) watch their actions and adjust if needed

We had an assistant GM in our campaign for 1 session, and by the end all but 1 character had died (mine).

The primary DM was not paying close enought attention, and the assistant who was running the combats was a me vs the players type of person.

He was fudging the rules to help his monsters kill characters, and the body count was rising.

Before you say it was the PC's fault because we weren't calling him on it you have to realize we are barred from having the DMG/MM at the table.

Very, Very, very, very bad situation.

Almost killed the campaign, all in the matter of less than 6 hours.

-Scott

 

[mudpyr8]

I think you need to determine why an ADM is needed. When I run events at a con I prefer a 2 DM style, but with clear division of labor. 1 for story 1 for combat. Trading off gives you a break and also lets you interact with players that have questions/actions that would otherwise slow the game down as 1 DM handles everything. Very positive experience.

The other reason to do both would be for a consistently large group, but that would take some coordination I think.

My advice is for an "event", 2 DMs is cool. The event can be anything from a con to a special encounter/senario in your regular game. Otherwise 1 DM is best.