Have you participated in rotating GMs?

[TyGuy]

I'm looking for any and all words of wisdom on the subject.
Did it work out?
What issues might it bring up?

I'm specifically interested in trying something like this.

Here's how Run Club works:

1) Every month (or two weeks, or whatever works) someone takes a turn and runs a game. One-shot, short game. No campaign. No big picture. Just a single game.

2) Everybody who plays will GM. Everybody. This is the core principle of Run Club. You cannot play if you will not GM. That's the pact.

3) When everyone has run a game, the round is finished and you can start over again.

That's it. Simple on the surface, but in that simplicity a number of complex issues are addressed.

I've been wanting to play spelljammer for some time and with its re-emergence, I can't help but feel like it's the perfect setting for round-robin GMing and episodic adventures.

[Satinavian]

Rotating GMs have been the standars in my 2.5 decades of RGPs over various groups. Generally that works fine.

Rule 1) That would be difficult. You generally don't want to strictly regulate the number of sessions a turn takes if you don't really need to. There are always longer and shorter adventures, there are always GMs miscalculating how long it will take and what the players do will and should effect the duration as well. Guideline is better than rule here.

Rule 2 ) Is fine. Not all our rotating-GM groups had it but many did and it was generally for the better.

Rule 3 ) A little flexibility might be called for. There is always real-life stuff getting in the way. As long as rule 2 is kept and not only in name, it would be enough.

[Easy e]

I think that sounds great.

We need more people with experience running games. I firmly believe many of the "issues" that come up on this board are because too many people are players and not enough are also GM.

Edit: Yes I have run rotating GMs before, but instead of one-shots it is mostly a short story arc with set characters of between 2-12 sessions, a finale, and then we pitch new games and a new GM takes over with all new characters. No real issues.

[Rynjin]

Depends on what you mean by "rotating GMs". A club like that where everyone takes a turn on some kind of specific schedule? No.

But most people in my usual gaming group have taken turns running a game at some point. There are two of us who do it more consistently, with games that last longer (I typically run on Saturdays, and him Sundays, so the games can be concurrent), but I appreciate the effort of everyone else who have tried to run a game even if it didn't last.

Currently the Sunday GM is trading off weekly with the third most consistent GMing member (through no fault of his own; his work means he can't always be in town to run or even play) of our group.

[icefractal]

We do that, roughly. There are always multiple people running, and everyone has run, but it's not a strict rota - some people run more often than others. Seems to work well.

[Wintermoot]

I was in a long running weekly game with six or seven others where we ran one campaign with rotating GMs. Three of us put together the "bible" of the campaign world and each person DMed one arc in a cycle. But there were only four of us who GMed. A couple people had no desire or ability to DM and thus, didn't.

It lasted from level 3-20 (pathfinder 1e) and I think it was a rousing success. The key, for me at least, was to not plan ahead of the arc I was running. I ran the first arc based on the "bible" and setting up how the group worked and introduced some long running plot points, but I didn't cement in my head how they would turn out. Then the next person built on it and the person after.

So with 17 levels and 4 people, I GMed levels 3, 7, 11, 15 and 19, so I GMed the first and last game and GMed 5 total sessions. GM two did levels 4, 8, 12, and 16. GM three did levels 5, 9, 13 and 17 and the last guy did levels 6, 10, 14 and 18. So they each got four sessions to by five, but that was intended from the get go.

I enjoyed it as a story-telling limitation because I had to build on others stories. Kind of like if you've ever did that thing where you write one paragraph of a story, then pass it around through a group with everyone writing the next paragraph.

I think it worked for us, but it probably wouldn't work for everyone.

[King of Nowhere]

never tried, but i can't imagine it working well. not everyone has the creativity, system mastery and time to be a good gm.
i ssuppose it could work if you run a module, but we wouldn't do that

[Alcore]

We tried...

never tried, but i can't imagine it working well. not everyone has the creativity, system mastery and time to be a good gm.
i ssuppose it could work if you run a module, but we wouldn't do that

we found we were willing to suffer through a poorly thought out adventure a person wanted to run; as opposed to someone finding GMing was aweful and took that negative energy with them into the game.


Each GM takes something into the game with them. Even in an episodic campaign it is much different game going from Warhammer 40k to Star Trek to Star Wars and back. Sure, it was the same universe but things got dark sometimes...

[clash]

We play rotating gms in my regular group but not one shots. Basically each person will take a turn at running a campaign when they get the fancy and everyone is encouraged to gm at least one at some point. It works great. Everyone gets to play and everyone gets to gm.

[animorte]

Yes, in fact. I’ll just quote the current/most recent experience I detailed in a previous post.:

That is such a fun way to run games actually.

Spoiler

Show

We started trading off a while ago, three of us (out of the 4-8 total depending on who showed up) will swap out various sessions depending on whether or not the last one accomplished the task at hand.

We even added a player who built his PC in like 15 minutes. My brother was supposed to DM that night but is less experienced and just passed it on to me so we could basically run this guy’s back story (as he had no memory). I just looked around and was like, “oh ok sure I got this. Give me like 10 minutes.” I threw open the Monster Manual, wrote down 10+ random names that came to mind (for NPC purposes), jotted down a basic idea directly relevant to his chosen background/class selection, then ready!

Very rarely are they unplanned and completely improvised as that. Most of it happens near the same town, but with varying general settings. When we have an idea of where to take “little vacations” from the main story (sometimes they still tie in), we have no problem trading off.

Based on this, my brother’s Life Cleric is specifically locked out of the Death Realm and can only participate in adventures outside of it, the ones he isn’t running. My PC is a GenieLock that sometimes will just disappear into his vessel for a while working on a certain project or taken off on a brief meeting/mission with his Patron. My wife plays a Lore Bard that periodically goes back to teach, present a soliloquy, or spend time with his beloved at the Blackstone Manor.

[NRSASD]

We are doing that right now. Some of our players don’t want to DM, so that’s fine, but most of us do. We had a “session -1” where all the DMs got together and collectively brainstormed the world we wanted to play in. Establishing the rough tone and themes were much more important than actual plots. We also established the setting rules and reiterated the “everything the DM says is canon” policy. Then, we each took a number and got in the queue. We run short adventures, 1-3 sessions of 3 hours each.

We didn’t mandate everyone has to DM because several of our players are painfully introverted and freeze up under social pressure (which is hilarious because they’re professional surgeons who regularly handle way more stressful situations than the rest of us).

Some thoughts:
Make sure all the DMs are on the same page about the game to avoid tonal whiplash.
Make sure the DMs know not to plot beyond their current adventure to avoid dangling threads and disappointment.

[KorvinStarmast]

I firmly believe many of the "issues" that come up on this board are because too many people are players and not enough are also GM.

I find myself with the same perspective.

We are doing that right now. Some of our players don’t want to DM, so that’s fine, but most of us do. We had a “session -1” where all the DMs got together and collectively brainstormed the world we wanted to play in. Establishing the rough tone and themes were much more important than actual plots. We also established the setting rules and reiterated the “everything the DM says is canon” policy. Then, we each took a number and got in the queue. We run short adventures, 1-3 sessions of 3 hours each.

We tried to start that in about 2015/2016. Two DM's with me being the third as I got more roll20 systems mastery under my belt. We only play on line, my brother is master world builder, all three DMs consult on world building stuff with final veto or approval being my brother.

Make sure all the DMs are on the same page about the game to avoid tonal whiplash.

we failed at that right out of the box. We were supposed to be "an adventurer's guild" (six to seven players) and each mini adventure (4-7 sessions was expected) would be run by one DM and then the end would be "and so you return to the guild and wait for the next hook/cloaked stranger/message from the duke/what have you." Instead, our level 1 PCs on an escort mission got teleported to somewhere else on the planet and ended up lost in a jungle until the group eventually stopped playing. A lot of that was RL scheduling/changes in RL stuff for the DM, but the core part of it was that we could not reconnect with "next DM up" because none of the characters were anywhere near the adventurer's guild where we had started.
As it turned out. So that whole party is still in limbo somewhere, at about third level, in an un named jungle somewhere on the planet.
Some months later, with the desire to keep playing being agreed, we started all over from scratch. That party is still going, though. (My 10th level celestial warlock is a part of that, but the campaign is on pause while my brother deals with that horrible RL thing about doing his job and traveling and such).

Make sure the DMs know not to plot beyond their current adventure to avoid dangling threads and disappointment.

Yeah, that's kind of important, per our example.

[Mastikator]

Yes, and it worked OK. Not *every* player GM'd and some definitely GM'd more than others. But it was adequate.

Some issues that came up in retrospect is that different people have different preferred styles, and whoever was the GM was the decider of the style.
Another issue was what you did with your PC while you GM'd, in my opinion having them turn into a DMPC is a bad- possibly worst possible option.

Some *really* good points: being in the GM seat at least once puts playing into a very different perspective, I think players who have never GM'd are very negative and unfair to GMs and tend to hold them to ridiculously high standards (all the while giving a pass to any player who merely isn't actively disruptive, mhmm).

Another *really* good thing is that nobody has to be the "forever GM".

I also think it's fun when a new GM uses a NPC from a previous game that was run by another player, it lets you recontextualize the world and the people which is always a nice treat.

It also lets everyone experience and learn from each other how to GM decently, at least eventually.

Overall I think the experience is positive and it works best when running one shots or two shots, or otherwise very short adventures.

[Catullus64]

It might be best for these games to be setting-light, or to use different settings. When my group of gaming friends did something similar (albeit with far less strict rotation), there were multiple conflicts that came up regarding setting lore, when one DM's material stepped on the toes of important lore that another had established for a shared setting. If you are going to do a consistent shared setting for these games, one of several things needs to happen:

1. Everyone agrees to be loosey-goosey with world information, history, metaphysics, tone, so forth, and not get so attached to their own contributions that it bothers them when others contradict them. Easily said, not so easily done.

2. The GMs (in this case, everybody) work carefully with one another to establish the setting and its internal rules.

3. Play in a published setting, and select a specific sourcebook or set of sourcebooks which are effectively gospel.

On a separate note, allowances should occasionally be made for mini-campaigns (2-4 sessions). Eventually, people will get tired of running games that are constrained to a single session.

[Vahnavoi]

I don't particularly see a reason to restrict yourselves to one-shots? If A, B and C are taking turns, there shouldn't be much of an issue with A running A's campaign on A's turns, so on and so forth, given they have an idea for a campaign. It isn't all that hard to format a campaign so that each session is reasonably self-contained. It only becomes an issue if you have a very large amount of club members so that there are long periods between turns... and even that can be solved by keeping good notes. I would know, I'm a convention game master, sessions between games of my campaign can sometimes be measured in months.

Myself, I've only been a rotating game master on much shorter time scales - primarily open tables, where me and several other game masters are taking turns running the same setting or megadungeon for people who can come and go as they may. I'm more familiar with rotating casts of players, where each session is held for whoever shows up, with no assumptions that the same people will show up each time to play the same characters.

[Talakeal]

Once, it was terrible.

Whomever was currently GMing ran their character as a DMPC, with all the usual baggage that brings.

DMs constantly got mad at the previous GM for being too generous with treasure and “Monty Haul” and then pissed off the players by finding ways to take away their loot.

And the original GM got mad at other people for fleshing out “his world” without his permission.

Disaster all around.

[KorvinStarmast]

In our world of shared DMing, if I may follow up, what happened at first was that my brother picked up the slack, and after we got to about 3d or 4th level RL was impacting his ability to DM. I then took over, and my PC (life cleric) was still with the party and someone else had to play her when necessary. My brother usually did, but sometimes he could not participate at all. She was mostly built as a support character so it wasn't too stressful and as I had already loaded a nice mix of spells none of them cared enough to change them.

A level later, my brother could DM again, and I picked up with the Cleric and we proceeded.
A few sessions later I needed to DM again for a few weeks, so I picked it up again and my cleric got played by whomever could run two that session.

Finally, when my brother could play again, that group went on hold and we started a whole new party a few thousand miles away in the same world, with me running them as DM for a while, then me playing as a PC for a while in the old group.
We are still doing that.
Since my cleric had gotten herself pregnant I retired her and we found a rational way to insert my current Celestial warlock into the party during the spring fair at one of the major towns in the region where the PCs were adventuring.

The key to all of this is for the DM's to communicate and agree on a tone / theme. It makes for a much more harmonious table. Tonight the second group will complete their level up to 10 which means that both groups are now at the same level. And that means that I am going to bug my brother to start DMing again, unless we can convince the original DM to maybe pitch in ... but since he's been moved halfway across the country by his company, and is getting settled in, I doubt he'll be able to do that for a while.

[thorr-kan]

I'm looking for any and all words of wisdom on the subject.
Did it work out?
What issues might it bring up?

For the 22 years I've been part of the Friday Night Gaming Group, we've run with rotating GMs. The Group has been doing so for longer than I've been a part of it. A few people have come and gone, but the Group lives on.

However, we don't follow your strict setup.

I'm specifically interested in trying something like this.

1) Every month (or two weeks, or whatever works) someone takes a turn and runs a game. One-shot, short game. No campaign. No big picture. Just a single game.

We've got six members; four guys, two girls. The guys DM, the girls don't. (This isn't sexism. One of the ladies has no interest in DMing. Until she fell in love with 5E and DMed the HELL out of Waterdeep Heist. We may revisit those characters. The other only plays because her husband does and it gives her a chance to hang with their friends. This isn't a problem; she's engaged as a player. It's just the social aspect is much more important to her than the gaming aspect. It works for us. Everybody behaving like grownups; what that world coming to, amiright?)

The Group often plays one-offs/short campaigns in a Call of Cthulhu meta-setting they've been using since the late 80s. We don't revisit characters, but the background is consistent. I don't run CoC.

Some of us run D&D 1E or 2E. Again, these are usually one-offs/short campaigns, though we have revisited a few we enjoy. I am running a 2E Al-Qadim campaign that we've take from 0th to about 9th level right now. It's been off and on for 22 years.

Each run takes as long as it takes. This can be a few months or most of a year. (We meet biweekly for about 3 hours.)

2) Everybody who plays will GM. Everybody. This is the core principle of Run Club. You cannot play if you will not GM. That's the pact.

Everybody who's interested GMs. But you, as a player, have to buy-in to some campaigns you might not really be interested in. That's the price for getting to run that one campaign you really want to.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. My 70s Detroit-excon-heist adventure was an unfocused bust. Another DMs deep, introspective examination of life and the meaning of undeath after life turned into a zany 80s sitcom that surprised everybody, including DM. C'est la vie.

3) When everyone has run a game, the round is finished and you can start over again.

We take volunteers, though we try hard not to have somebody DM back-to-back...to-back (Danger Committee reference). That way lies burnout. I was going to climb back in the AQ saddle for the first time in 10 years when my eye failed. Once I recover from surgery, I'm back on that wagon. Meanwhile, movies and board games.

[Quertus]

Wow. So, first off, thank you for posting the rules to “run club”. Although I *have* been in a “rotating GM” game or two in my time, I’ve never even considered something so… “Lawful” as the three laws (un)safe run club.

As such, I’ll tailor my advice (at least in this first post) to giving my response thereunto.

1) one-shots only? Good in theory, bad in practice.

Well, that may be a bit strong, so let me backpedal a bit. Because it depends on what you value.

Some conceptual one-shots end up taking two or even three sessions. Sometimes, that’s because of the amount of content. Sometimes, that’s because the players get stuck. Sometimes, that’s because the players want to dive deeper into something than the GM expected. Sometimes, that’s because the players go an unexpected direction, or attempt to go multiple directions. And sometimes that’s because Real Life(TM) gets in the way.

Now, if you’re me, that means that you give the session the amount of time it takes, you give the players the amount of rope they ask for, and you let things play out naturally.

However, if you value teaching people pacing, and both building stories and taking actions to cookie cutter molds, then obviously mandating such timing will be valuable.

2) Everybody runs. Good in theory, questionable in practice.

So, once again, it depends on what you value.

Many players just aren’t cut out for GMing. Or, at the very least, their growth would be better served by then running just a single one-shot, rather than having them commit to continuing to do so.

But if you view players as “freeloaders”, then obviously you’d want to keep things “even” and “balanced”.

More to the point, are you trying to work with the people you have, make a game with your friends, or are you trying to find a specific type of people to associate with, or build the community (assuming the community is feeling a GM deficit), or build your group?

Another thing to take into consideration is, people who have GM experience often look at games differently than “pure” players do. If everyone’s eyes are opened, you cannot get an unbiased read on things… but neither do you need to worry (as much) about players cluelessly breaking the game out of ignorance.

So… how one sides on this one strongly depends on what one values… and what variables one thinks to consider in the first place.

3) everyone runs in order (ish)? Eh…

Let me be clear here: if it’s Roger’s turn to run a session, but his dog just died, his truck just broke down, his girlfriend just broke up with him, and they’re looking to make a country song about him, do you really want the rules saying it’s Roger’s turn to run the game?

“Yes” is a valid answer to that question (and not just because I’m batting for team Lawful Evil). Getting experience with delays might be part of the Intended training. Or you might have delayed anyway - if he’s not up to run, would he really be up to playing? (Again, both “yes” and “no” are potential valid answers to that question, too.)

——-

Still, though, at the risk of losing Lawful Evil cred, I’ll say that, IME, a different approach seems optimal for the types of groups I prefer.

So, I prefer a group of friends getting together to play a game, over a group of gamers, or a corporate gaming optimization sweatshop.

I value individuals with diverse talents pools, and utilizing everyone’s talents, over homogenized gaming product substitute, substitute.

I value the stories I get to tell, of the player who’d never played (let alone run) an RPG before being the one to encounter a Sphere of Annihilation when the PCs split the party (the only session where you could hear a pin drop as said player carefully scientifically evaluated the anomaly). I enjoy the amazing stories you can only get from an environment almost but not quite completely unlike run club.

However, despite my very biased descriptions, if you have values that differ from my own (especially if your area suffers from a dearth of GMs, but also if you value “homogenized experience” (and subsequent aggregate reductions in required communication or expectation mismatch), or are planning for the future & planning to introduce a system you’d really like to *play* rather than just *run* (something that’s been a nigh-unsolvable problem around these parts)), and really strongly favor linear games with no self-motivated players (ie, no “distracting side-quests”), then I can’t actually fault you for preferring “run club”.

Ok, now I’ll read the replies, and see just how off-base I was with my knee-jerk reaction to run club’s rules.

[Bulhakov]

I've tried it, but without forcing anyone who didn't want to GM.
What it mainly achieves is selecting the best GM in the group.

[Alcore]

I've tried it, but without forcing anyone who didn't want to GM.
What it mainly achieves is selecting the best GM in the group.

Or finding a replacement when burn out occurs (or he has a bad day). Or someone wants to give it a try.

Run Club can't work in real life if too many are of the "I don't want to" variety. Worse if they find they hate doing so. You'll quickly find yourself at an almost empty table.

[Easy e]

I am assuming you only sign up for "Run Club" if you are somewhat into the idea of running games in the first place.

[The Glyphstone]

My current group rotates the GM slot, but for full campaigns that last 2-3 years on average. So not really 'Run Club'.

[Quertus]

Once, it was terrible.

Whomever wasn’t gming ran their character as a gmpc, with all the usual baggage that brings.

DMs constantly got mad at the previous GM for being too generous with treasure and “Monty Haul” and then pissed off the players by finding ways to take away their loot.

And the original GM got mad at other people for fleshing out “his world” without his permission.

Disaster all around.

So confused.

What does “as a gmpc, with all the usual baggage that brings” mean to you? And was that the one who was currently the GM, or those who were not currently GM, that did so?

And what… how did the original GM expect the other GMs to run games without fleshing out the world?

Miscalibrated expectations (including wealth) and undoing / invalidating other GM’s work? Those sound like they are issues that should be considered before embarking upon such an endeavor.

[Talakeal]

What does “as a gmpc, with all the usual baggage that brings” mean to you? And was that the one who was currently the GM, or those who were not currently GM, that did so?

Sorry, typo, fixed. Whomever WAS currently GMing rand their character as a DMPC.

The big problems IMO are favoritism (real or imagined), metagaming (real of imagined), conflicts of interest, and divided attention.

Like, I remember one time I gave the party all air themed magic items, and my character got a ring that could cast either the jump or feather fall spell, but another player, who got a continuous ring of flight (an objectively better item in any circumstance) still started crap saying "Notice how only Talakeal's PC got an item with TWO powers? Wonder why that is..."

[TyGuy]

For clarification, I found those run club rules and copy/paste them for simplicity. I see them as more guidelines or inspiration for myself.
I think I would like to try keeping the adventure length down to 1-4 sessions. Our one-shots usually take us 1.5 four hour sessions.
I'm struggling to articulate why, but I really like the idea of making sure everyone DMs before the next round. I don't think keeping to a strict rotation lineup is necessary. Life happens and shuffling would be expected. But there's a certain reciprocity if everyone has to take their turn. I also don't see any issue with people sticking to their comfort level. Maybe one person just does a session of 1 hr of real content fluffed with antics. And another asks if they can take an extended 7 session deep dive.
For my table I don't see too much issue with the "non-DMs" running something ridiculous or light. We've been playing together for over 2 years and there's no illusions of each other's style and involvement. Plus if we did run spelljammer, the setting is ripe for lighthearted shenanigans.

I think as contrived as it may be, each PC has to sit out for the session while the owner DMs. Perhaps creating such a plot device should be a topic for session 0.

[Batcathat]

I don't really see the point of having everyone GM. Personally, I love both playing and GMing (and like to think I do pretty well in both) but the roles are pretty different and not everyone will be good at both or enjoy both. I guess I could see a use for a setup like this if no one wanted to GM, so GMing would just be a necessary evil the group shares.

[Vahnavoi]

I am assuming you only sign up for "Run Club" if you are somewhat into the idea of running games in the first place.

People regularly sign up for things that turn out to be not what they're into. Sometimes the feeling of being pressured or obligated to do something is what makes it not what they're into, even if they initially were into it. On the flipside, people regularly refuse to sign up for things that they would be into, but something in the pitch makes it sound like too much trouble - whether a rule is phrased positively or negatively, for example, can make all the difference.

[Misereor]

I'm looking for any and all words of wisdom on the subject.
Did it work out?
What issues might it bring up?

I'm specifically interested in trying something like this.

Works fine for us.
We are just finishing off Pathfinder's Rise of the Runelords adventure path, and we have had four different GM's.

Notes.
- First and foremost, you need players who don't seek advantage for OOC knowledge and other aspects of GM fiat.
- Allow a character pool. With constant rotation, not having a few "alts" can quickly become annoying.
- If someone only has time to GM for a session or two, do a sidetrek instead of switching GMs mid-adventure.

[Easy e]

I don't really see the point of having everyone GM. Personally, I love both playing and GMing (and like to think I do pretty well in both) but the roles are pretty different and not everyone will be good at both or enjoy both. I guess I could see a use for a setup like this if no one wanted to GM, so GMing would just be a necessary evil the group shares.

When you are a GM, you get a very different perspective on role-playing games than when you are a player only. Many table issues and misunderstandings could be resolved if everyone at the table had this shared perspective and experience.

This process makes sure everyone has that perspective in a structured way.