Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Aulendil 12-21-05, 12:15 PM	I am a newbie, when it comes to DM-ing campaigns (house campaigns, not RPGA sanctioned). I have been playing D&D ever since I started college. Recently, a fellow player and I decided on running a campaign together for next Halloween. We thought that having two DM's would make the campaign more interesting(or at least as complex as possible). I was wanting to know if this can be done without any problems? Any suggestions on why or why not to do this? I guess what I'm also wanting to know is, has this ever been done? The other DM and I will not be controlling any PC's of our own. Just NPC's and certain other characters of significance. They will not be adventuring with the player's characters.
solbergb 12-21-05, 12:33 PM	Well...in RPGA play you get tons of Judges, and many authors, so it is a lot like a very big "multiple DM" game. In a home campaign, I've had a fair amount of experience with multiple gamemaster games. In college we had a large floating champions game where the world was shared but each gamemaster "owned" certain villains, organizations, even governments. Some plots never made it to the PC's because inter-GM infighting prevented them from seeing light of day. Some really big adventures, we'd have two GM's running things too, to keep the 8-10 players engaged. Another approach that works well is the GM gives his best, smartest and nastiest bad guys to be run as if they were PC's by a second person. He then only feeds the "second DM" the information those bad guys would have, and lets them come up with plans. Invariably, such campaigns are tougher on the PC's than normal, because the secondary DM doesn't pull punches and doesn't have to worry about out-of-character knowledge influencing his handling of the problems PC's have. They're a lot of fun, but they require a lot of extra communication with the second DM, and he spends a lot of time in another part of the house reading a book or something, when stuff is going on that he shouldn't know about. Generally the "Division of labor" version works best. You two need to divide up the world (and the deities) and decide who owns what part of the world. If you go that way, the two of you check in before doing a major plot arc, to find out what impact it will have on the other guy's NPC organizations (whether any will assist, oppose, warn the PC's, etc)...but generally you guys can run episodic games where whichever of you is free can run, as long as you don't strand the PC's in the middle of a plot and then switch DM's.
Aulendil 12-21-05, 12:42 PM	Wow! That's a lot to consider!! However the campaign that me and the other DM where deciding on making was to be in Ravenloft. It's going to be a single campaign with only four expected sessions to complete (thus Halloween, and four sessions to equate the once per week playing day. This will cover all four weeks of October). What he and I have been doing, is working together to create everything from storyline, NPC's, puzzles, everything. Then once everything was said and done, he and I were going to DM the campaign together in a way to make Ravenloft that much more challenging, scary, and fun!
kenobi65 12-21-05, 01:35 PM	I might suggest you repost your question somewhere on the "general" D&D boards, elsewhere on the WotC boards, rather than here. As this board is specifically dedicated to the RPGA's Living Greyhawk campaign (rather than home campaigns), you may not get many responses here (and, that board is a more appropriate place for this question, anyway).
Aulendil 12-22-05, 09:30 AM	I apologize...
kenobi65 12-22-05, 11:10 AM	No prob, you *are* new, after all. :) Just trying to help you figure out the best place to post your question.