The Rotating DM

[Valtu]

So the title of this thread is a pretty accurate indication of what's going on with our group:

We recently took a break and put our current campaign on hiatus (for various reasons), which includes our DM, who willl be playing in a couple other groups during this time.

So. . . rather than choosing one of us to DM full-time, or trying to find another, we are going to each experiment with being the DM on a rotating schedule.

Not everyone in our group may be able to or necessarily want to DM, which is of course optional, and so far nobody has been clamoring for it. There were a few "I'm not going to go first!" but nobody fighting over anything. About half of us said "I'm good with whenever," so we rolled initiative for it.

The basic rules are that we keep to consistent house rulings on various things as they come up, and in general, we will try limit our mini-campaigns to no more than 3 sessions (although if one was particularly engrossing I'm sure we could all vote to continue until it was completed).

We all rolled level 1 characters using whatever source books we wanted, and agreed that we'd basically level after each DM's mini-campaign during the first rotation. This will result in our party being 5th level, after which we'll work something less frequent out, possibly leveling only after certain criteria or possibly just every X amount of sessions. (Our group has never used XP, and I'm ok with that. We have varying levels of optimization, including various levels of rule enforcement in general, so it keeps things a lot fairer across the board).

Anyway, aside from the obvious potential shortcomings in storytelling from jumping around constantly, I think it has some major advantages for us all as players:

1. Nobody gets stuck with a DM whose play style they don't enjoy for very long
2. Nobody gets stuck DM'ing too long after they might find out they don't enjoy doing it (or at least not compared to playing)
3. Everybody will wind up doing more reading, thus further grasping game mechanics and (hopefully) becoming more familiar with the concept/necessity of attempting to have game balance.

What do you guys think? Have any of you done something similar before? Our group is comprised of 7 people (one will always be DM'ing, so a max party of 6 at any given time). 2 of the 7 are first time players and most likely won't DM for some time, which leaves 5 of us, thus being level 5 by the time the last one in rotation goes.

I'm going to post possible session ideas soon. Should I continue in this thread or dedicate that to its own topic? I'm leaning toward the latter, so if alternatives or critiques are suggested, it's easier to separate that from the discussion of the Rotating DM situation itself.

[killer_monk]

I used to do this with my group, simply because we lacked an experienced GM. After awhile we settled on just one person (myself) GMing 90% of all our games.

I can say it's always nice to see what other player's viewpoints of campaigns are. Since everyone has a different style in which they GM.

This is also an excellent opportunity to pick up neat ideas from the other players and incorporate them into your own method of GMing.

So all in all treat this as a wonderful learning opportunity, and try to take advantage of this situation to show what you enjoy in a game
game.

Welcome to the GM table by the way! :smallbiggrin:

[SliceandDiceKid]

My group had a similar situation. 2 players (married) found that playing made them fight and another moved out of state. So three of us were stuck on our own. We rotated DMing and did our best to not meta game. We actually had a great time doing it. We leveled up after everyone had a turn to DM. Each turn consisted of any story and approximately two significant encounters. It was a lot of fun and I actually learned that while I so greatly love to play, I can roll any characters I want when I DM. AND exploding runes are HILARIOUS. In case you didn't know... Now we found another few players for our group and I started DMing for another group too. Just make sure everyone is still having fun. Whatever it takes to keep people interested and keep the groups momentum.

[Valtu]

Awesome, it's good to hear that you guys both had good experiences with a system like this. I'm definitely glad we're doing it this way and not picking a full-time DM who's never done it before.

Our first session was last night and it went really well. Our DM last night was one that I thought would definitely do well. Always a lot of enthusiasm for the game and definitely puts a lot of thought into things.

We'll have part 2 of his storyline next week, which will probably conclude it, from what he's said. Definitely looking forward to it.

[Chronos]

I was in a group of four that did this for a while. We went through five adventures, so through the whole cycle and then one DM repeated. The DM du jour kept his own character as a DMPC each time, and just kept his mouth shut with whatever creative ideas he had (we joked in-character about how every so often one of us seemed to get really dumb).

We didn't encounter any real problems with it, but it did put something of a hamper on overarching world-building, so you might want to keep that in mind if that's important to you.

[Bonzai]

We rotate our DM's as well. We always have two campaigns going simultaneously, with two different DMs. That way the DMs run alternate weeks, gives them time to prepare, and helps prevent burn out. When one DM's campaign ends, another player steps up and runs a campaign. We have a great group, so it works out really well.

As for alternating DMs every session... It can work, but it requires a solid and mature and experienced group. Otherwise it can spiral out of control, and devolve into vendettas and petty grudges. If your group is solid, then it should be a lot of fun. If you have problem players, then perhaps DMing is best left to the more experienced and unbiased players.

[Valtu]

As for alternating DMs every session... It can work, but it requires a solid and mature and experienced group. Otherwise it can spiral out of control, and devolve into vendettas and petty grudges. If your group is solid, then it should be a lot of fun. If you have problem players, then perhaps DMing is best left to the more experienced and unbiased players.

A very valid point, but in this case, that's precisely one of the things I think will make this a success to some degree. Sure the campaign itself may be very uneven and sometimes may even not work under some DMs (who knows), but I think the experience of having to DM will give us all perspective and hopefully help all the players understand why sometimes there is some tension or clash of ideals.

I think as a whole, our group could be called somewhat dysfunctional, so I think this may help curb that by forcing those who DM to actually do some research and look up rules.

Part of what makes things interesting is that our group in its current state doesn't really do any sort of optimizing, unless you consider remembering some of the fighter bonus feats' prerequisites and planning characters with those in mind to be optimized.

Another issue is our last DM (the only DM the group has ever had) house ruled a whole lot of things, and the group is still as a whole, getting used to the idea that those things aren't set in stone.

What I'm really hoping for is a little less reliance on "I remember it being this way" and a little more looking up the actual rules more often. I'm trying not to be forceful about it, and I don't even mind deviating from those rules to an extent, but some of the ways things were ruled in the past seemed more about making a snap judgment in the heat of the moment and not because of a lot of consideration.

It'll definitely take a little time, but I think we'll become a more functional group after a rotation or two of DM'ing.