Post/Author/DateTime	Post
rizzenagane 01-22-07, 04:43 PM	so four of us wanna play and know how to, but we have no dm, whats a good, easy way for us to do so? we think we should all take turns dm-ing every three weeks but that is a lil hard....someone please help! also, feel free to email me if you want/can, it tends to be a lil easier than checking this board but w/e...
Radijs 01-22-07, 04:53 PM	Easiest way is that one of you takes the DM's seat and the rest of you plays. There's a thread here somewhere "lessons from DM-ing with my GF" Or somesuch. Its full of useful information.
rizzenagane 01-22-07, 04:59 PM	but we all wanna play, together. do we just have our character act as an npc and dm? cuz thats no fun. and stringing our campaigns together isnt an issue yet, but i am afraid it will be. is there just a big book of already written-out campaigns that we can all just use and designate one player to dm for the night or what? i am soo confused here. man i hate not having a suitable dm in my area!
mcnoo 01-22-07, 05:15 PM	I can't think of a way of it working without a DM, but if you want pre-written games, there's loads you can buy and and endless amount hiding here. http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=d%26d+modules&meta=&btnG=Google+Search
thrassoss 01-22-07, 05:27 PM	The best way I'd suggest to tackle this is for all to agree to run in a single pre-made world...say Forgotten Realms and to chose a starting location. Then each player make a maybe a 10th lvl bad guy somewhere in the general vicinity of where the players are starting each player make this badguy/his orginization/his minions. Something pretty standard no 10th lvl culties with pit fiend bodygards and crap like that just whatever a fairly normal 10th lvl person might have and be able to influence. As each players turn comes to DM they agree to only advance the story of thier badguy and his minions. An example: Player1:10th lvl Rogue-big city crime boss kind of a thug and slaver has 2 6th lvl luitenents each with maybe a dozen 1st to 4th lvl underlings and most thieves in city give them a take. Player2:10th lvl Necromancer-Researching how to summon a powerful demon, his 7th lvl Priest wife is aiding him. He has a 4th lvl necro apprentice and some hireling. She has 3 3rd lvl priests and some lay worshipers Player3:10th Orc Warrior that leads a bad or 20 orc ranging from 1st to 4th lvl and 1 5th lvl shaman Player4:A succumbus with 4 sorcerer lvls she has no followers but can often get males to do what she wants. Now no player knows what the other players have as far as bad guys and all agree to kind of leave alot of major NPC involvement to a minimum. After all if Eleminster is the person who is really aiding the PC's behind the scenes with 2 or 3 of these problems he would likely do something diffently than if he was aiding against the PC's against only 1 problem, so it could get wierd if player3 is having the old guy at the bar listening being eleminster in disguise and player1 is having the dog barking outside be elimister polymorphed watching this could get wierd. Then as the story progresses it will likely get interesting might even have to have like player1 DM for a fight against Player2's badguy and Player4's badguy. I've done this kind of thing in the past and it turned out pretty well. Usually ended up someone wanting to run his story more than one time in a row though so it kind of led to someone wanting to be a full time DM of the group. Well hope this helped
Some_call_me_Tim 01-22-07, 05:28 PM	It is really tough to constantly have changing DMs on a campaign. Everything from differing rulings to story continuity suffers. My question is why doesn't any one want to DM? A lot of people here will say DMing is the most rewarding aspect of playing D&D. Sure, it takes some work and so skill but the only way you are going to develop is to force yourself to be comfortable in the DM chair. There is a lot of help available for novice DMs: books, adventures, even these boards.
aramilcaelvan 01-22-07, 05:32 PM	If you really want to change who is DM from time to time, you should just have one person DM a full campaign, then switch off. I wouldn't recomend switching off durring the same campaign.
a_psh 01-22-07, 05:36 PM	The GM is not a required component of an RPG, but, honestly, D&D doesn't really have the framework necessary for GM-less play. Nor would the existing rules be very effective if you added a whole method for playing without a GM to them. You can, however, delegate authority pretty significantly, such that players have fairly wide input into the flow and direction of play.
Boshi 01-22-07, 05:38 PM	If you're newbies it'd just complicate things to change the DM around. Play a few short mini-campaigns (4ish adventures) and switch off if you want to do that.
a_psh 01-22-07, 05:40 PM	Have you considered running short games? I'm not talking "one-shots" here, I'm talking specific detailed short stories. Like if a campaign is like a TV show, what if you did something more like a movie? Someone would GM for 3-4 sessions, you'd all develop and resolve some kind of story in play, and then switch you'd who was running the game for the next one. You can chain them together with the same characters, if you want, though they needn't all be related. But, basically, focus on creating a complete story over several sessions and getting to the good stuff rather than pushing on the breaks to drag things out.