Have you tried it? What did you like about it? What would you have done to improve it?
We just started a new campaign with one of my groups. We tend to have around 6-10 people show up and we really enjoy city campaigns, where the group isn't necessarily always together. Since most of us have run a game at least once, we decided to use two DM's this time.
The setting is homebrew, we've been using it for a little over 10 years now. A major change is we're going to try it with E8 and trending slightly towards lower magic, but not strictly.
Anyways, we're a couple sessions in and it's going well so far. We used the Ghost Tower of Inverness as an intro dungeon crawl (we actually used the tournament time rule to encourage them to split the party). Low RP session so people could just get their feet wet. (We did use this method of character creation that I've adapted)
Second session we did a murder mystery, which works well for introducing a large number of NPC's, factions and backstory for a city campaign. We put a cap on the number of scene's per day in-game, but let the party split to deal with tasks.
Partially this is also to solve the common (for us) problem of the thieves going off for an hour and doing stuff while everyone else waits. Now they get to do something too, that is important and relevant to the game.
One I'd be curious from other DM's who have done something like this, how did you coordinate prep? Any tips, tricks or tools you'd recommend? Right now we're using Google Docs and it works pretty well.
I'd love to hear stories from other people about experiences, both as player and DM of having multiple DM's. What did you like? What could have been done better?
(Notice, I left out "what did you hate?" I don't care what you hated, I'm only interested in the solution it resulted in)
I helped run an amalgamation of Ravenloft I and II. I DM'd I and the other DM ran II.
There was a way in II for you to merge the game. Having I be ran as all flashbacks.
The most innovative thing we did, was split the villan too.
This allowed each DM to stay active while the other DM was playing.
I ran Strahd and his allies in II and he ran Strahd and his allies in I
It was a whole lot of fun. Also it allowed us as DM's to maintain a neutrality that usually you cant do.
|
Interesting thread!
The only way Iv'e ever considerd using 2 GMs is for running two parallel groups through the same adventure, with a lot of focus on the interactions between the teams. My dream is to do "Pact Stone Pyramid" with 2 GMs, one group representing the Pathinfders and the others representing the Chelexian competing party. The adventure will be a race to survive the dungeon AND escape from it with more treasures and archeological findings than the other group.
There are of course plenty of problems with that, but most can be solved by the two GMs thinking ahead and developing a good way to communicate between each other during playtime. An increase in railroading might also be needed, so that things could be planned ahead of time properly and no bugs will disturb the flow of the game.
Overall, two GMs create a very different game than 1 GM. Im really hoping to see some official advice on the matter in a future hardcover Paizo rulebook.
I think it can work very well. Guest-DM's can provide a lot of depth if they keep to adventure appropriate risks and rewards while respecting the backstory.
As kmal2t said deciding on relative ranking/equality of the DM's is necessary. Situations where the guest player/DM uses his status to unearth details on other PC's may arise unless boundaries are set! ("hand-over character sheets I have to design my encounters" may not sit well depending on your characters story arc!)
We had our fourth session tonight. I'm enjoying it immensely. We tend to play moderately long sessions, we get together at 5, break for dinner eventually, and wrap up between 12-1am. I particularly like having another person there to help be in charge as I don't have to always be "on", I can take short mental breaks, or take a backseat and consider plot developments coming up.
My co-DM and I don't have a lot of rules disagreements, we've been friends a long time and while we have a lot of differences in our philosophy behind mechanics, we WANT to work together and resolve things quickly and to the satisfaction of the group.
The part I have had is minor story inconsistencies. I thought we had things planned one way, but he introduces it in a different light or slightly modified from what I had thought. I just roll with the changes (the game setting is originally his homebrew) to keep a smooth line through everything. I've only had to retcon one thing, but I don't think the players really noticed even.
It's been very nice to split some of the prep and have someone who is also involved with the campaign to both brainstorm with and review details of said prep. Google Docs has been super helpful.
I have quite a bit of experience with this. Will go into detail when I get home from work.
My experience with running a game with 2 DMs might be slightly different than the norm, because the other DM was my wife.
Typically, we'd run the game in arcs, with one of us being the main DM for an arc, while the other assisted, and then switching. We'd plan the broad strokes together, and the main DM would hammer out the details on their own as when we weren't the main DM we ran a PC.
If there ever came a situation where the party was split, the plan was we each took one half of the party and handled DMing duties. I vaguely remember this happening only once, and that it got sort of messy as we weren't expecting it.
As far as rulings went, the primary DM at the time was supposed to be the one who decided, but I knew the rules better and couldn't keep my big mouth shut sometimes, much to my wife's irritation. So, that is something I would definitely keep in mind. Either have a primary DM, and let them make the call, or be sure you are both on the same page. Sometimes it might be necessary for the DMs to call a 5 minute break for them to discuss things, which is much better than them fighting about a ruling in front of players.
As far as tools go, all we had was a spiral notebook that we used for planning. It worked well for us, but we live together. I am currently planning for a campaign that I am co-DMing with a friend, and we haven't gotten a solution for planning yet. I am running at least the first session, and we have a couple of weeks until then. The next one won't be for another month, so hopefully we'll get something figured out. We have an Obsidian Portal site for the campaign, but I'm not an ascendant member and he doesn't even have an account yet, so short of sharing an account (which goes against policy anyways) that won't work. Google Docs sounds like a good idea and we might try that.
The only situation my usual group has ever done with more than one GM has been a bit more confusing than just two.
A tiny bit of background: We were running a homebrew setting called Arch, which centers around a transdimensional city (think Planescape-ish). Within that city, they are constantly sending out groups on missions (i.e. adventures) in Stargate-style episodic fashion. Each session was its own one-shot adventure.
Within this, we had multiple GMs. Each devised their own 'handler': An NPC that would send the PC's for that day out on a mission. Each handler had their specialty, that catered to the type of adventure that GM liked to run. All players had multiple characters, and as PC's gained experience, they would be assigned into 'tiers' of group, so that no one ended up on a mission with people too far disparate in level. This system meant that on almost any given day, someone could run a game for any of the available people, if they so chose.
Every so often, the more regular GMs would meet, and between them, work out the overarching (get it? overARCHing?) storyline. Many of the adventures were basically just sidequests, keeping us entertained and leveling up the lower characters.
It was pretty much brilliant. We bounced around between Krynn, Faerun, what I'm pretty sure was Middle Earth, even Ravenloft, as well as more homebrewed settings than I can count. After we wrapped up the first major storyline, the game kinda petered out - but it was completely hectic most-days-of-the-week fun for about six months.
So, campaign is still going. It's been nice having two DM's just for convenience. I had to take a spur of the moment weekend trip to help a friend who is dying of cancer, so my cohort ran a session solo, then he had to miss a session because of a wedding, so I did. Now, he's just had his first kid, so I'm running solo for a little while, though he's helping me prep.
It's actually been slightly awkward not having him there. We're running a city campaign and it's been really nice that two players (or groups) can go take care of some sort of business at a time, speeding things up.
Google docs has been a lifesaver. The ability to seamlessly share a document, make comments, track/revert changes, etc, has been huge. He and I correspond in e-mail a lot, but I vastly prefer when we make it a document instead. I have something like a 150 e-mails between us and it's much more difficult to find that one thing I remember we talked about once.
I have a physical notebook I use during sessions, with a lot of info in it and I've had to start transcribing it to a doc so he can look at it too between sessions.