Rotating DMs

I played in a D&D group that used a rotating DM for about 6 months. At first we had everyone in the group take turns DMing. A lot of this has already been said, but here's what we learned from the experience:

1. Some people are not good at DMing and/or do not like to DM. After a while, only some of the players took turns being DM.

2. Different DMs had different ideas about what is appropriate in terms of challenge and treasure. You must get on the same page.

3. The campaign arc did not build as well as it could. Have you ever played the story-telling game in which a group of people sit in a circle and make up a story, where each person can only contribute one sentence (or one word) at a time? Everyone tries to pull the story in their direction. This is what it is like with multiple DMs. Else, as a previous poster pointed out, the campaign can seem like a series of disconnected adventures. To overcome this, our group came up with a couple meta-rules: First if a DM introduced an NPC, a later DM could use the NPC, but only with the first DM's permission (in case he had later plans for him). Second, each DM, as he was planning his adventure, would collaborate with the next DM to connect the adventures together. For example, the following DM may request that the group find a certain item (like a map), meet a certain NPC, find a certain location, etc. While the campaign did not build up to a nice climax like others I've been in, at least it was not as disconnected as it was when we first started playing.
 

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You could do it with a stargate situation. Each adventure it to a different world so that continuity problems can be explained and nuances of each world/plane.
 

We have done the rotating DM in the past, with varying results. It worked best back then when we had a traveling group of adventures - each new location was a new adventure. Even so the number of DMs quickly dwindled to 2, and there was some problem with consistency - like, a squad of foe x wiping the floor with the party one day, and a week later the same party is storming and destroying an entire keep of foe x. Items also were a concern.

What worked a bit better was having an overall campaign arc "collect the lost magical gems". Each gem was at another location on the planes, and each DM could make an adventure for a gem.

These days, in one campaign we share DM duties between all three players, and we share the setting. Different DMs will take over different plots, and we switch multiple times per session. It also requires some flexibility, and to be open enough to allow corrections from the other DMs when one is using an NPC one did not make oneself in a way he/she would not act.
 

You could do it with a stargate situation.
Actually, that's the exact concept I used to explain what we could do. We're using a "World Gate", and each mission will be to recover lost artifacts needed to mend the shattered world (think Outland in WoW).

Each DM's adventure will have us gating to another part of the world -- a part that might actually be physically separated from the rest of the planet. We're looking at this as an episodic TV show, like Stargate or Star Trek. There will be an underlying premise for everything, but not necessarily a long running plot connecting the adventures.

Bullgrit
Total Bullgrit
 

I've wanted to do this for a long time (shared storytelling) but it's proved very tricky to impliment.

Thanks for all the good ideas!
 

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