Too many DM's! [stop the insanity]

[barsoomcore]

Sigh. I am the only DM in my group. Two or three other members have offered to run games so that I can have a chance at playing, but so far have not managed to put anything together.

I haven't played D&D in... Good Lord, sixteen years or so.

Sigh.

 

[Graf]

Does anyone else game in this situation?

Used to. I have a lot of sympathy.

Its aggrivating and it makes the game very political. More than one person basically admited that they didn't like D&D, CotC, Cyberpunk or whatever-game-we're-running-this-week and there was constant tension. Hacking out a schedual to let everybody run a game was tough and then there was always tension to try to get the schedual changed.

[The 3 or 4 game arch ends and people say nice things. The DM then says, "I could run a bit more next week if you want...." So people start trying to backpedal while the person who's been sitting on their ass and doing nothing this game because they don't like the setting/ruleset/whatever, is getting pissy.]

Even worse it brings all the my-system-is-great-this-system-sucks stuff out of people. Since they know the game is short there's no effort to find things to like about the current system and occasionally somebody starts doing something irritating to 'prove' how bad the system is/how un-fun the world is/whatever.
There's a lack of continuity and every third game people are re-inventing the wheel. Half the party never really understands the rules fully before the game's over(which would be OK but the GM also doesn't usually know them that well and there's never a consensus about the game that you're playing).

Anyway you have my sympathy...

 

[clark411]

My group does, in a way. Currently we have one two year campaign that runs Sundays, and a conglomerate of games that is run on Fridays. It's pretty funny, often I'll arrive Friday and hear "are you up for XYZ tonight?" when I had heard and planned for ABC.

So far, we have a Low fantasy DND campaign, a stone age DND campaign, a Starwars D20 campaign, a Spycraft campaign, and a new campaign all available to play. All the players like to DM, few want to do it long term (read, almost none). We also get special event games too- like a recent LOTR mini-event thanks to the recent release of The Two Towers.

On the whole, while it's nice to have so many options, it's also a bit of a hassle and a bother. At least one other player besides moi really wants to have a single, steady character that he can get to like and have hopes for. Playing these throwaway characters for three or five games tops before the campaign sputters to an end without true conclusion is hardly satisfying.