Multiple DMs - Any advice?

[malraux]

In the group I play in, the DM has had to drop out due to a change in work schedules. For the rest of the group, everyone wants to continue playing, but no one seems gungho on taking over the DMing seat. As a compromise, it looks like we are going to start rotating the DM responsibilities. Luckily, we are just going through the Scales of War AP, so the plan is to rotate the DM at the end of each magazine.

Has anyone had good or bad experience with this sort of thing? Is there anything we need to do make things work better?

 

[Rechan]

My First Attempt At Collaborative Game Mastering - Gnome Stew, the Game Mastering Blog

Methods of Collaborative Game Mastering - Gnome Stew, the Game Mastering Blog

Collaborative World Building: Dawn of Worlds - Gnome Stew, the Game Mastering Blog

 

[Crothian]

The only problem I can see is potential secrets that cross adventures or playing of NPCs and things that will carry over from adventure to adventure. As long as DMs don't favor certain players or allow their own character to really take a back seat so you don't have DMPC issues it can work.

 

[Rechan]

The only problem I can see is potential secrets that cross adventures or playing of NPCs and things that will carry over from adventure to adventure.

That's the issue with round-robining an AP.

As long as DMs don't favor certain players or allow their own character to really take a back seat so you don't have DMPC issues it can work.

This.

I'd also say that SOW is a poor AP. It seems to get better as the adventures progress, but is just a lame slog in the first few adventures.

 

[Gilladian]

I don't know anything about Scales of War, but I have several times participated in RR games.

Firstly, make a firm rule that the Dm's PC is never present during his dming sessions.

Second, the way we ran the plot was that there was a single "homeworld" with many gates in it to other worlds. Adventures always took place in these other worlds. Each DM was responsible for one world. The adventure he/she ran could be homebrewed or a module, but had to be short enough to be completed in no more than 3 sessions. Sometimes this meant we had to forcibly cut things off, as when one newbie DM thought he could do all of Forge of Fury in 3 3-hour sessions... (NOT!).

One DM was in charge of the homeworld (ME) and always co-dmed the home sessions, but then I sat back and let the other DM take over. This gave the campaign SOME continuity, and gave the beginner DM's some fallback if they got confused. It also gave me (the only experienced DM) a way to "fix" major mistakes (like artifact-level magic handed to 3rd level PCs). This may well be unnecessary if the rest of the DMs are more experienced than this group was.

We played at the local game shop, and I ran this sort of game for about 2 years, keeping new DMs in training the whole time. It was a lot of fun, and some of them became quite competent.

 

[kitsune9]

Has anyone had good or bad experience with this sort of thing? Is there anything we need to do make things work better?

I only had one experience where I had a guest DM take over for a while on the campaign, so I can play. He was a terrible, DM-on-the-fly, kind of guy who was telling me up and down about his ability to really give and craft excellent adventures, cool plots, hooks, etc.

Because of the change in style, the direction of the campaign went nowhere, and we lost players who had absolutely no interest in returning to play D&D. I was peeved to put it mildly.

 

[S'mon]

I think some kind of overarching structure is necessary - an Adventure Path provides that. So would using a familiar published world, like Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms.

The shared hub + individual spokes approach works well, like the homeworld + gateworld approach given above.

Rapid rotation is best I think, like the 3 sessions per GM above.

More than 2 GMs I think is best; ideally everyone in the group. The reason is that GMs vary wildly in quality, and with just 2 GMs you will find players reluctant to play under the poorer GM for long, and pining for the better one. With 3+ GMs it becomes less of an issue.

Monty Haul GMing can be dealt with through various methods:

Run an adventure path, and agree to abide strictly by its loot.

A boss GM who removes overpowered stuff prior to the next adventure, like in the hub & spokes model.

Run a system like 3e or 4e with Wealth by Level/Standard Items by Level, and let players start each adventure with whatever items they want up to the limit. Reasons can be - much game-time has passed (say a year between adventures); or there is a fluid market in items (only for high magic setting), or the PCs work for an organisation that provides their gear - king's knights, church champions, city guard etc.