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IM@work
2008-08-12, 04:01 PM
For our next campaign my group has been toying around with the idea of multiple DM's. The idea is that the three DM's, myself included, create a homebrew campaign world, in this case a city campaign, and each control different aspects of the game. Each person would have one to two sessions before they handed it off to the next DM.
For instance I might control one section of the city while the other two control their own portions.
Another idea is for each person to run different guilds and NPC's within the city.

Do you have any suggestions and is this even a good idea?
We don't really have a plot yet, but that's coming, any suggestions for continuity of sessions?
Thanks for your comments and help.

Kyeudo
2008-08-12, 04:15 PM
Co-DMing can work, but you have to make sure to work together when creating the world and make sure you all want the same general style of play and power level. If one guy wants to play low magic and the other high magic, styles will clash.

AstralFire
2008-08-12, 04:16 PM
That sounds like a recipe for bad things unless you guys are all sync'ed up. I've co-DMed before, but it was more "one guy is primary storyteller, one guy is primary mechanics runner."

Human Paragon 3
2008-08-12, 04:18 PM
My group frequently CO-DMs and we've had a lot of success. Here's why:

1) We know eachothers' play styles
2) We are all good DMs with lots of experience
3) We are all flexible people that enjoy a shared storytelling experience

If you don't meet the above requirements you may have some trouble, but I assume you do, or this idea wouldn't appeal to you.

In terms of what each of you "controls" I would be flexible in that department. When Tom is DMing, Tom controlls the whole world. When Joe DMs, Joe controlls the whole world. Everybody else controls their players (and cohorts/companions) and that is it. The segmenting you describe will happen automatically, because each of you will have special knowledge of what you've created: neighborhoods, guilds, races, specific NPCs, but everybody should have the option of utilizing, modifying and destroying what the others have put into play if it serves the story. Use your own judgement of course and comunicate with eachother. "If something happened to the ironmongers guild, does that ruin your next session?"

Here are three ways we've done it:

1) DMs each run exactly one session before handing off the reigns. This keeps things moving quickly and allows for a lot of plot twists. It can be frustrating however when you don't get to finish a thought before the next DM takes over. One alternative to this is allowing DMs to run two sessions in a row and skip their next turn DMing as a "penalty."
2) DMs run as many sessions as they need before handing over the reigns. This is usually 2, but is sometimes 1 or 3 depending on how many ideas the DM has and wants to use.
3) Each DM is responsible for a 5-session "arc" which, in a way, is a short campaign that is self-contained, but ends with a hook for the next DM. The time we ran the game this way, each of 4 DMs ran exactly 5 episodes. We started at level 1 and leveled up every session so on the last episode we were level 20. This way is less modular, but results in a cleaner experience where DMs aren't worried about stepping on eachothers toes. Another good thing about it is we got to experiment with a lot of different character types because characters came and went from arc to arc.

Good luck!

IM@work
2008-08-12, 04:22 PM
We are all being pretty flexible with world creation, it is the running of the plot that worries me. How can one keep a plot going without spoiling the fun to the two DMs playing PCs? If three people know the plot how are they going to make it fun for the other two DMs, and those other two are going to really have to work at role playing.

AstralFire
2008-08-12, 04:25 PM
That's pretty much impossible unless you're all the sort of people who don't mind spoilers. It takes the same kind of mindset to roleplay well without your future knowledge -and- enjoy it.

Human Paragon 3
2008-08-12, 04:25 PM
We are all being pretty flexible with world creation, it is the running of the plot that worries me. How can one keep a plot going without spoiling the fun to the two DMs playing PCs? If three people know the plot how are they going to make it fun for the other two DMs, and those other two are going to really have to work at role playing.

Yes, you will have to really work at roleplaying when you have an idea of what's going to happen. Keep secrets from eachother and don't spoil major plot points. Turn your PC into a traitor. Or set him up to look like one. Take your friend's harmless NPC and make him the secret BBEG. End your session with a cliff hanger that the next DM has to get the group out of. Give the group challenges that YOU don't know the answers to and let the next guy clean up your mess. Leave plot threads dangling for other people to play with if they want to. Maybe the three of you will have different end points in mind and constantly struggle with eachother, nudging the party in different directions. This is OK as long as you're having fun.

Improvise! Surprise yourself!

But communicate, too.

Leewei
2008-08-12, 04:44 PM
The principle seems very similar to running a LARP. I'd expect similar challenges as far as communication and organization are concerned. I'm looking into a similar idea. Please post again to let me know how your experiment plays out!

IM@work
2008-08-12, 04:49 PM
Yes, you will have to really work at roleplaying when you have an idea of what's going to happen. Keep secrets from eachother and don't spoil major plot points. Turn your PC into a traitor. Or set him up to look like one. Take your friend's harmless NPC and make him the secret BBEG. End your session with a cliff hanger that the next DM has to get the group out of. Give the group challenges that YOU don't know the answers to and let the next guy clean up your mess. Leave plot threads dangling for other people to play with if they want to. Maybe the three of you will have different end points in mind and constantly struggle with eachother, nudging the party in different directions. This is OK as long as you're having fun.

Improvise! Surprise yourself!

But communicate, too.


Wow, these are all great ideas! thanks.
However, I think the path we are going on is more of a council DM type who make decisions on the major plot points, but totally surprise each other and the party every session.
Another idea two of us had was multiple DMs in one session, perhaps in a time-travel session or the like. What do you think about using more than one DM in a single session? Suggestions?

EDIT: none of us are LARPers so we wouldn't know, and the only people we know who larp are very hard to play with, so you'll have to enlighten me on that topic.

valadil
2008-08-12, 09:31 PM
As long as you just have one GM at a time it should work well. My group recently did a game where everyone rotated through the GM seat. We made sure there was no permanent damage between sessions (kind of like TV), wealth was conservative and mostly done by the book, and everyone leveled between GMs. We even started leaving plot threads open so on purpose so that other GMs could run with them (though that wasn't till everyone did a self contained session and we got some practice with the system).

The thing that really helped our collaborative DM game was our wiki. Even if one person was in charge of each session, there was some information that everyone shoudl be privy to, especially records of old sessions. We did everything on the wiki, from rules votes, to loot division, to plotting, to character sheets. I highly recommend sharing a wiki between DMs and possibly PCs too.