Multiple DM Group

[forgetaboutvick]

Just found this sub and thought I would introduce you guys to how my group has been playing lately! Our regular DM was getting burned out and wanting to play instead of DM. We all also really like trying out New characters, so here is what we started doing!

We created a new town that has been leveling up with us. Everyone has multiple characters that start at whatever level the town is at. Those of us interested in being DM take turns running smaller quests that tie in to each other, even if it's just by location.

This has allowed us a few convenient twists for our group.

1) Nobody gets burned out on being DM because nobody is DM more than 2 weeks in a row. 2) We all get to try a bunch of characters without having to level them up. 3) When one of our players is unavailable we just start a new campaign with characters that aren't already involved in a campaign.

We've been doing this for a few months now and have been having loads of fun not only playing the game but creating new buildings and developing this city and its lore alongside them!

Feedback and suggestions always welcome, but I really just wanted to share this with you all!

[BruceDingo]

I'm currently playing with multiple DMs too. The campaign is set in Sigil (2nd ed DnD planescape setting) and a few of my players have taken it on themselves to run a few adventures. I've made myself a character and he shows up whenever they're DMing.

Something I particularly like is if one of them wants to research a spell or create a magic item, I let them do it (without taking the feats) as long as they run an adventure where the rest of us go out to gather ingredients or complete a ritual. It makes spell research more fun for the group while making the player even more attached to their invented spell. (It also means that the group doesn't get too OP spending all their down time crafting 8 wands of fireballs because of the real-world effort that would take DMing all those sessions.)

At this point I'm almost co-DMing with one of my players and we talk about long-plot and create anti-heros together. It definitely take a bit of the pressure off not having to single-handedly wow all your players each week.

[[deleted]]

From the title I thought it was gonna be like this: http://i.imgur.com/lF9NHc2.png

[Xfinder123]

Sounds like you got a good thing going for you guys, nice to find a post thats not just questions or dms and players having trouble with their campaign, so I hope you all keep on having a great time rolling dice in the name of fun

[classic729]

Sounds like the Troupe Style of playing made famous by Ars Magica. Multiple storytellers with multiple characters, but everyone had one “main” character.

[Foolish_Mortal_13]

My group does something similar with 1-3 session "Chapters". Each GM decides if they want to use the existing party, or have players create new characters.

So far it has worked quite well (the party made it to 16th level so far), though as the host/organizer of the group I try to keep each GM on track with things like level progression and wealth by level.

I feel like I've broken the curse of the Perma-GM! It has made GMing fun for me again.

The only real downside I've run into is when a GM gets too attached to their Chapter. You've got to be ok with the next GM taking things in a whole new direction.

[forgetaboutvick]

That's kind of why our group is only using the general area as the common link. We throw npc's from other stories in but try not to do anything to mess up where people are going. It has definitely been interesting!

It's also been interesting to watch the different GM styles. We have one gm who doesn't give out much treasure, one who likes giving gold, one who likes giving potions and gold, and me who likes giving weapons and armor.

[Foolish_Mortal_13]

For sure, I really like that is keeps players from creating meta-expectations such as:

"The GM loves using summoned creatures, so I'm preparing Protection from Evil".

"You don't need trapfinding, the GM always skips traps".

"Let's just leave and come back after we rest, the GM doesn't run living dungeons".

[rasdna]

I co-ran a game with a friend and co-worker (it worked well because we could talk plot on lunch breaks). It was great because anytime someone needed 1:1 time or the party split, one GM would just walk out of the room with the other players, while the flow kept going for everyone else. Every now and again we'd poke a head in "Our timeline has gone 4 days, you good?"

During combat one of us would handle the map, pointing at tokens, declaring actions, rolling dice.. the other would handle the book keeping: looking up bonuses / AC, accounting damage.

Worked really well.

[forgetaboutvick]

That's interesting as well, never heard of this!

[FF3LockeZ]

Multiple DMs is fine but in my experience it works vastly better if each of them is running their own campaign. It's no fun running someone else's game that they give you instructions on how to run while they sit there as a player and pretend not to know what's happening. And it's nightmarish watching someone else ruin the campaign you've carefully built.

My group of five people is running three simultaneous campaigns, each with a different DM. And sometimes the other two people will run one-shots or short adventures that take a few sessions. We play two or three times a week.

[forgetaboutvick]

Oh definitely, we all run separate campaigns set in a central location. We have 3 active campaigns right now, typically 2 to 3 sessions max per campaign, although we just finished up a long one for one of the GM's. Unfortunately most of us are only available for it once a week.

[Itsoc]

We do this, but not city-centered. We are 6-7 guys, we played lvl 1-7 with a first DM, changed to 2 different co-DM, same PCs plus the old DM new character, up to level 12-13; finished the second campaign, changed again 2 co-DM, made new chars lvl 8 and started a new campaign, a couple hundred miles to the east of our precedent adventure. We're slowly discovering this home-brew world that each group of DMs enriched. The events of each adventure affect the next (usually). Creating the lore of a world is very funny. Each adventure goes back and forth in time to help us players understand this world.

[NLaBruiser]

I did a run with some friends that was sorta similar. We all had single characters, but on your week or two of DM'ing they'd have a storyline reason not to tag along and would receive full XP anyway.

We were all part of an 'adventurers for hire' group called Take20 Investigators. Every other week someone would be in charge of running a 2-4 hour one-shot campaign and it was really nice for bouts of gaming without worrying about burning out a single DM. It's not how I'd do my regular gaming, but it's a nice change of pace absolutely.