Would a game group where there were changing GMs work?

[Dannyalcatraz]

Done this more than once, including a 1Ed/2Ed campaign (now updated to 3.5Ed) which has been active since the mid 1980s.

However, I have to say I prefer the multi-game setup to the multi-DM setup in general.

 

[aco175]

I have one overall campaign arc going on about a coming war, but with 3 seperate parties involved. The original set of characters are 17th level, the next group is 13th and last group is 6th. We kind of burned out playing the higher level characters for a while and started another group so players could play diferent classes and this group changes party members more than the others. We play roughly one level of each group before changing to another group. Hopefully the campaign will wrap before the new 5E comes out.

You could try this with multiple DM's. Each is involved in the overall campaign, but each has a seperate piece. The biggest problem I always had with multiple DM's in one group is magic. One dm may give too much magic or too powerful magic and then you are scrambling to recover from that when you DM.

You could set some guidelines for magic and have just one group. 4E may be better at this than Pathfinder with guidelines for the amount and level of each. You could also have some sort of senior/junior Dm with one being able to overule/assist the other. This seems like trouble though.

 

[Super Pony]

However, I have to say I prefer the multi-game setup to the multi-DM setup in general.

Very much agreed. It goes a long way toward avoiding single-system and player character burnout.

The main thing to keep in mind with revolving games is to give each GM enough time to get through an adventure/scenario/story-chunk so that you aren't spending the first hour or two hours each sessopm remembering where everyone is, who they are, why they care, and what the post-it note with a "P" on it means stuck to their character sheet.

Then there is the related concern of making sure each GM actively and diligently parcels out their game/campaign of choice into easily digestible chunks so that their "turn" doesn't last four months.

 

[Nagol]

I've been involved a few times with multi-DM campaigns. Usually it craps out; occasionally it works really well.

Probably the best experience was where I and a friend co-DMed a campaign. We took turns running an 'adventure' (it was a sandbox so the term adventure was very loose) until it was complete and then the other took over. The rules between us were we had to maintain continuity -- one DM could not invalidate something introduced by the other, but any form of evolution was fine. It kept us on our toes -- the friendly elf introduced by DM #1 could become the BBEG under the other, but you couldn't plan on inplementing that evolution yourself because you could never be certain the other DM wouldn't touch the character before your big reveal... It went well because neither of us were attached to specific items in the campaign and we were careful to make the same characters and places feel the same regardless of who was running.

Most of the time it works less well. I've tried situations where each DM runs a separate group of PCs in the same world, DMs pick up and develop scenarios based on the previous DM's ending, and shared worlds where each DM "owns" a section of the map. The first style often suffers from ownership/writing block issues. The latter from players developing favourite PCs and/or places and one DM gets limited time to run.

 

[Wycen]

I'm currently playing a variation of this idea. Two weeks on, we play Warhammer FRP 3E and then we switch to two weeks of Pathfinder. During the Warhammer period the Pathfinder DM emails us with rumors and to deal with downtime actions. This was the best idea the '3' DM's could come up with. I say 3 because our host also wanted to run some one shots of CoC. And then we have another guy who always shows up with a Delta Green book and mentioned wanting to run something in the future.

At first I was happy to play with people that I like. I'm leery of playing any one shots at this point though. Partly because horror/CoC just doesn't do it for me and partly because I don't want anything else slowing down our progress in the other games. I still happy playing both, but I am wondering if eventually I'll gravitate toward Pathfinder over Warhammer (it will not be the other way round because if I look hard at Warhammer it is essentially a game designed to grind you down, but I digress).

 

[mcbobbo]

Back in college I had an Earthdawn group that fluctuated between 8 and 12 players. I recruited one of them to co-GM the sessions, just as above, but we ran the game simultaneously. We deliberately split the party up as often as we could, and where we couldn't we'd at least split the combat. When there was a pivotal plot scene with multiple NPC's, we'd split them up and voice them interactively. It was pretty epic.

It didn't survive the summer break, but I would still recommend it.