When your regular DM can't (or doesn't want) to DM for a while, how do you prefer to rotate DM duties?

[redrick]

I've been running some one-shots while our regular DM is on vacation. There's another thread going about a group that rotates DM's for the same group of characters. In the past, I've taken a little time off and given another player a small sand-box within our existing campaign to carve out a side quest.

What's your groups preferred way to handle temporarily passing the DM torch?

 

[Grogg of the North]

I try to be open with my group. I like to DM but I find that I can burn out easily if I'm running every week. So I ask to run every other. When I suggested that, another player volunteered to run on my "off" weeks. It worked well.

 

[Greenfield]

Our whole campaign is based around this.

I know I've explained the mechanic before, but...

At the beginning of the campaign we select a "game world", which essentially means we pick a map and some world premises.

Each player makes up their character, 1st level, using the limited set of source books chosen for the campaign.

Each player also selects where in the game world their PC is from. They write up that city/state/region. They decide how much of that write up is common knowledge and how much is there for players to discover when the time comes.

We select an over-arching story line or campaign goal. Something that has legs, so it will last for 20 levels or so.

We then take turns as the DM. Presume that I start things off. I'll lay the plot foundations, including what brings together these people from all over the game world. My adventure will take place in my character's home city/region, and my character will be an NPC for this time.

When my adventure is done, there will be a clue or lead that directs the party to some other city or region. Specifically, the city or region of the next person planning to DM.

My character will join up at that time, and the new DM's character will find him/herself occupied with family business, dodging responsibilities or what have you. In short, they drap from sight and become an NPC.

When their adventure is done there will be a message, a clue, some reason to move on to a different territory. By chance, the territory that the next DM wrote up.

And the process repeats.

To make it so DM's character isn't penalized for their involuntary down time, the character ends up spending their behind-the-scenes time earning Exp and treasure to match what they would have earned had they stayed with the party.

To make this work isn't always easy. You need players who appreciate the spirit of the game, who are on the same page in terms of how the world should work.

DMs can introduce plot hooks for one another, and can add complexities to the main story line. When we propose that initial challenge nobody knows what the solution will finally be. In fact, we may not even know what form the grand challenge will end up taking.

For example, our last campaign started with the knowledge that someone, an individual or group, was working to sew seeds of chaos, to try to tear down what was left of the Roman Empire. They had, somehow, engineered a layer of clouds (smoke?) that was blanketing the world, which inhibited crop growth through lack of sunlight, which would lead to food shortages. And somehow, even the gods were unavailable. No Divination spell that depended on contacting a higher power seemed to work. The best you could get was an Augry. No Divination (the spell, not the school), Commune, Contact Higher Plane, etc worked. The oracles were silent.

The party was made up of people with no fame or reputation, each commissioned by their mentor or parent, to meet in Athens for the great games (Olympic), and there try to track down these "Agents of Chaos" and deal with them.

That was it. One DM introduced the idea that, this being a Law v Chaos campaign, there was a truce and even a bit of cooperation between factions in heaven and Hell. (Lawful Good and Lawful Evil would both land on the side of Law.) Another introduced the idea that there was an Illumian Cabal involved. On a separate adventure the party learned how the gods have been taken out of play.

Each DM added to the plot, resolving some points while adding new ones. And none of us knew how it would end until right before it did.

 

[blitzpackage 15]

We usually have the one DM but sometimes someone will want to run a specific adventure and they will incorporate it into the campaign.

 

[Legatus Legionis]

.

 

[Umbran]

I am the GM for my groups. When I don't run the game, the game doesn't happen at all.

The poll choice, "We do something else," is the closest fit, but it might imply that the something else is still being done together, by the group (like, "we get together and play board games"). Generally, if I'm not running game, the group doesn't even gather.

 

[Gilladian]

I am the GM for my groups. When I don't run the game, the game doesn't happen at all.

The poll choice, "We do something else," is the closest fit, but it might imply that the something else is still being done together, by the group (like, "we get together and play board games"). Generally, if I'm not running game, the group doesn't even gather.

This. When I burn out, we take a few weeks or months off. Nobody else will DM.

 

[redrick]

I am the GM for my groups. When I don't run the game, the game doesn't happen at all.

The poll choice, "We do something else," is the closest fit, but it might imply that the something else is still being done together, by the group (like, "we get together and play board games"). Generally, if I'm not running game, the group doesn't even gather.

Yes, that answer was meant to include both "nothing happens" and "we play cards, watch basketball or go to the bar."

When my current group first started meeting, on weeks that I couldn't DM due to work conflicts, they would still get together socially. I think mostly because they really wanted to keep the spot carved out in our schedule, so it didn't just all fall apart, but nobody else was comfortable DM'ing. Now that we've been meeting for a little while, there's a bit more confidence knowing that, if we have to cancel this week, the group will probably still get together next week.

I was the DM when this group started, but another player really wanted the opportunity to DM, so I stepped down to let him give it a shot. Unfortunately, while I enjoy playing, I really miss DM'ing, so I jumped at the opportunity to run some sessions while he was gone on vacation. The initial plan was to just pick up my original campaign where we left off, but, at the last minute (1 hour before everybody showed up), I decided to just run an adventure I'd read and liked. We used the same characters, but didn't make much effort to maintain any continuity beyond level and general gold levels from the last adventure. It worked really well, and I think I'd do it again. It feels like a stand-alone Conan or Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser story — we remember the gist of the characters, but we don't have to worry about exactly what happened whenever we last saw the characters, and if characters drop in or out, it has no impact. Then we can pick up where we left off when our regular DM takes over next week.

With a different group, when my work schedule got really bad (bit of a pattern here — my work is unpredictable but can easily blow up), a player offered to DM so everybody could keep playing, but he wanted to keep using the same characters. I gave him some parameters as for what he couldn't do, as this came in the middle of another arc, where going to certain places would trigger events that I needed to run myself, and then we discussed his hook and I worked with him to tie it into the setting. It went ok. I think everybody enjoyed his sessions, but when it was over, I had a hard time tying his loose ends together with my loose ends. I respect groups that can properly handle rotating DM's with the same group of characters, and Greenfield, it seems like your group has a great system in place for it. But it hasn't worked for me. (I also think your system wouldn't necessarily help my problem, which is an unreliable schedule which occasionally takes me off the board for a while, without much warning.)

 

[arscott]

For a while, one of my game groups was running Indie games that were really built around the idea that each campaign would be no more than a handful of sessions long--so if one GM was a bit burnt out, another one would step up to take their place.

In the past, in campaigns I've run, I've also had guest-gmed adventures. They were set in our ongoing campaign, with me making sure to give the Guest GM the resources they needed to run a game that feels like a seamless addition to the game instead of a side-track.

In my most recent gaming group, though, a game that doesn't happen just means we play boardgames instead.

 

[was]

We used to run an alternative campaign. But now that we all are working, we just do something else when the DM can't run.