Run AP with different GM's

[Cannibalsnax]

Hey everyone,

I'm wondering about the following:

I'm my group's regular GM and after having run a long campaign during the past 4-5 years I'm getting somewhat burned out. Unfortunately, none of the players in my group are up for taking the reigns for such an amount of time but all are willing to chip in running games for 2-3 months (we play weekly btw). Our plan is to have everyone, including the GM running the campaign, create characters and run them through an adventure per GM as one long campaign. So after a GM finishes an adventure-story, he can take his place at the table playing his character as a PC while another player takes over as GM (and his character becomes a GMPC). Not sure where it will end up but we'll see. :D

We have never played any of the AP's and I'm curious if they could be run in a setup like this without things being spoiled. For example, if we would run RotRL and each GM would run a part of the story, will the rest of the story be ruined for the first GM who ran Burnt Offerings (or for the second having run Skinsaw Murders, etc).

Any suggestions are of course also more than welcome for our setup. :)

Thanks in advance!

[Pan]

There are some huge spoilers in the APs that I'm not sure this would work out well. The APs are not individual modules they are a connected campaign. Now if the group is cool with a certain level of meta-game when it comes to GM rotation then it could work out.

[Cannibalsnax]

Thanks for the reply. I think we'll look for something else, maybe some loose modules. While I believe everyone would be able to play around the knowledge, it most likely kills the fun as you probably lose the enjoyment of certain surprises in the story.

[S'mon]

My own feeling is that because the AP books are themselves written by different authors, albeit with editorial oversight, the connections between them tend to be pretty rough, and it ought to work well for rotating GMs to each run one book of an AP. There will be rough patches, but nothing worse than you see in most of the APs anyway.

[Skeggi]

We've been playing Shattered Star this way after our original GM decided running games wasn't for her and wanted to stop after the first book.

We're on the third book now and it seems to be going ok. The plot is not intricate enough to have real spoilers if you run earlier ones. Each person has a character and when it's their turn to GM their PC just heads off somewhere on some errand, to return again for the next book.

It's had the added bonus of letting people who dont normally GM give it a try.

[captain yesterday]

Shattered Star is an excellent campaign for this!

[thenovalord]

Yeah most episodes are only somewhat linked

I like multi gm campaigns

If ap doesn't feel right just string together some modules n each person run 1. You can botch together as a campaign.

[Jenner2057]

I'm not sure how feasible it is for your group, but what our group usually does is run two APs at the same time. One DM will run the first AP and we'll play through a single book over the course of 4-6 weeks. Then the second DM takes over with the other AP. We'll rotate back and forth from book to book and AP to AP.
Gives the players a break so they don't get bored with running just one character and lets the DMs recharge with a turn in front of the screen instead of behind it.
Just how we do it but it works well for us. *shrug*

[completely coincidental]

Our group played through Kingmaker in this way (with three GMs), and it worked reasonably well. As I recall, there were some spoilers in the books, but they described broad plot directions rather than specific events or encounters. As long as the previous GMs consciously avoid metagaming, the spoilers probably won’t cause problems.

The main drawbacks (in my opinion) were that it was difficult for the GMs to make significant changes to the written adventures, and it was difficult to tie the player characters’ backgrounds into the ongoing plot.

Kingmaker mightn’t have been the best choice of AP for this approach, though. Perhaps a good choice would be an AP that’s fairly episodic (for example, one where each book is set in a different location) and one that other GMs have been happy to run without making significant changes. (I don’t have any suggestions though - our group hasn’t completed any other APs yet.)

[bulbaquil]

completely coincidental wrote:

Perhaps a good choice would be an AP that’s fairly episodic (for example, one where each book is set in a different location) and one that other GMs have been happy to run without making significant changes. (I don’t have any suggestions though - our group hasn’t completed any other APs yet.)

Reign of Winter might work well for this. For the most part, each book is in a new location with very few recurring NPCs and minimal foreshadowing - there may be some issues with the transition from book 1 to 2, though, as the area transition there takes place mid-book 1 rather than at the end of the book.

Others have mentioned Shattered Star, which I think would probably also work well.

[brad2411]

Personally it has worked out well for me. I play with my friend and we usually interchange adventures in an adventure path. We each play one character.

[thenovalord]

Jenner, we have done the same but normally a gmail does 2 parts, then the next does 2 more. It works as long as we keep the pace up and get done in 12 weeks per gm