Opinions on the "Rotating Dungeon Master?"

[Libertad]

I already started this topic on another site, but I like to cast a wide net.

So, has anybody here tried to rotate DMs for the same campaign?  Any experience with this?  What do you think of the idea?

[Kajhera]

Black Marches does that pretty consistently. It works well there, especially as people move in and out of activity, or might want to run just a limited number of sessions. Rulings, homebrew/Dragon material and such are made by a council, that wouldn't be such an issue for a normal party.

Part of why it works is having resources on the world readily available to anyone who wants to DM. This can ... sometimes be weird for a limited group, but if you have people say, develop areas of their background only tangentially related to other plots then it can make sense to have them run a session there.

My normal group trades DMs fairly often, and our campaign world sometimes demonstrates worrisome signs of continuity, while at other times adventures are quite isolated from each other.

[kitep]

I've done it, and there was much rejoicing.

But I think the success of it depends a lot on the DMs.  If one guy wants a low-magic world, and the next guy is Monty Haul, it won't work.  <Insert various other clashes>  So it'll work for some groups and not for others.  When we did it, my buddy was the DM who created the world and did the main plot, but I would throw in some side adventures - with minor loot and XP.

In a lot of ways, I prefer it.  I get attached to my characters and don't want to change to a different one when we get a new DM - I'd rather keep playing the one guy.

One episode we still talk about today is what we call "tag-team DMing".  My buddy was running, but he got up to go to the bathroom.  At the time, we were in a dungeon crawl, so I slid into his chair and threw a wondering monster at the group.  When he got back, he shrugged, sat down in my chair, and started running my character.  I DM'd for a couple of rooms making it up on the fly.  Then I got up to give him back the reins, but someone else said "my turn" and grabbed the DM's chair.  So I took HIS character, and the game continued.  It was a lot more fun than I described here, but I'm glad it was a one-time thing and not something we do all the time.  (And FTR, when we rotate DMs, each DM usually has his own character to rotate in.  It was just this one particular time that we ran each other characters.)

[JohnnyMayHymn]

One of my old groups did that once, we re-rolled characters 3 times before reaching 7th level due to balance issues.  After that it worked out and we fell into 3 categories, DM's who advance major plot points, sandbox style odd jobs/crypt/sewer/dungeon crawl (me), and one DM who tended to invoke catastrophe in the region and we would usually move to another area.

EDIT: we had the DM' character sit out, but he still got his share of xp

[StreamOfTheSky]

I did it.  Only issue was the other players didn't really want to DM much.  90% of the time it was either me or one specific other player that was DM.  One player, who is frequently my DM, never once took a turn, because he said he was burnt out enough from his games as it was.

When I was DM, I still controlled my PC (ditto for anyone else DMing), but tried to keep him to a more support role and not take the spotlight.  Obviously easier with some characters than others.  Ours was a gestalt game, so having multiple possible roles was a cinch.  My character was a Swordsage* // Cloistered Cleric / Shadowcraft Mage, so I did more buffing and healing and tanking w/ martial strikes while DMing.  When I got the chance to be player only, I did more scouting and broke out the flashier stuff, like phantasmal killer.   Of course, I never sandbagged my "spotlight/glory level" to the point that it screwed over the group, but my most consistent concerns as a DM were always 1) Am I targeting my character at least as much as I am the others? and 2) Avoiding situations where I was basically running the show as the others just looked on such as scouting or social skill interactions whenever possible.

I think it went pretty well.  No one ever complained about myself or one of the other part time DMs treating a character unfairly.  I should also note...my group was all friends I had known for at least 2 years each.

EDIT: I agree w/ Johnny, too.  Unless you're ok with the entire group metagame knowing the overall plot / plans, only one or two of the co-DMs can actually run plot-advancing sessions, for the most part.  Other DMs would by necessity be running sidequests and the like.  For example, at one point, I dumped the party by means of plot into the Underdark for an extended period of time.  This was after a long plot-advancing dungeon I ran, and I wanted a break.  So it was like, "until I pick it back up with the plot, you're in the underdark!  Create sessions accordingly!"  One player had us take a job from one drow faction to murder a drow household and frame a 3rd faction for it.  Another player had us go to a Beholder city and end up dueling the hive mother's chosen champion in a gladiatorial arena.

[veekie]

Well, not entirely necessarily, you can have independent plot lines each DM runs for the shared group, all the other DMs need to know is that X and Y are out of bounds until the plot is resolved.

[Officeronin]

We once used a timer set to 30 minutes.  Each person DMed until the bell rang (running their PC as a DMPC) and then it went to a random person (determined by a roll).  It soon became a game of each DM trying to leave the next DM in an impossible spot, to see how they would get out of it.  Hilarious when one tries to corner the next DM and the dice make him keep DMing!

It was a lot of fun, but not a real campaign

[Slz the Resolute]

My group has done this many times. The reason for this is because several people, my self included, are sort of uncomfortable with the combat situations( my group loves to duel and the like). So usually we switch DMs when we get into a fight, and then switch back for to social part of our session. This makes the session more fluid and generally does not end up in an argument  over a specific and random ruling( I.E whether or not someone is flanking due to X feat and Y position).

When and if our session goes to long, we end the session and a new DM picks up were the other one left off. Not sure if that is on topic but our group likes to not have one DM for several sessions... We all like to play!

[wotmaniac]

My group did this once for a few sessions, and then petered out.
We decided to give this a run using Aberrant (goddamn I hate that game).  We'd go for an hour and then switch GMs; rinse and repeat until everyone at the table gets a turn, then call it a night.
While the idea seemed cool at the time, I really didn't like it at all.  I'm not sure if it was because I turned-out to not like the game itself, or if it was the group dynamics, or a combination (or perhaps something else entirely).  It seemed that I always got stuck with following the one guy who always found a way to end his turn with ending the entire arc in a very episodic fashion; leaving me with having to come up with a totally new hook on the fly every time.  Never mind that we were partially ignoring the games meta-plot while simultaneously acknowledging the inevitable (the guy who brought the game to the table faps to every metaplot that WW puts out; while the rest of us couldn't care less about it).
Overall, it just didn't seem like there was very good chemistry.  I probably won't do something like that again.

[Arturick]

"Rotating Dungeonmaster" has always equaled "nobody gives a damn about the plot, this is just going to be a series of CO-testing dungeon crawls" in my experience.

[Unbeliever]

We do it in Mutants and Masterminds with a bit of regularity.  Although it mostly just bounces back and forth between one person and myself, granted, the group is only like 3 people. 

I think if you have a solid idea of the world and themes involved, then it can work fine.  But, I think it works better in a game that's relatively episodic, which D&D campaigns tend not to be.  I think it'd need to be something distinct from the usual "save the world from evil overlord" approach.  Maybe more "Game of Thrones" or something like that, where there could be different threads that DMs could pick up.