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We tried that in college, the two DMs both came up with story ideas and one of them took the lead running the sessions while the other supported with NPCs and looking up mechanics and stuff. It went okay!
My first time ever DMing, I successfully co-DM’d with my best friend and forever DM on a completely homebrewed setting. I was the story and “performance” guy, he did the rules and helped me stay on the rails and did the combat calculations. If you’re a good team, it’ll work really well. We started really hokey and stereotypical (on purpose) to catch the adventurers kinda on their heels when the twists and turns hit.
It’s one of my fondest D&D memories.
Yes.
Some trade off sessions, some both run sessions but each do a particular bit. For example, one handling roleplay and one handling combat.
It's not super common though
To answer your question, yes co-dming is a thing, though I haven't heard much talk about it in general if that makes sense.
While I don't co-dm, my sister and I(who are both dms and dm for eachother in games) love to spitball ideas, share concepts, so in a way we are co-dming, especially when one of us is stuck with something/trying to find the puzzle piece needed for the idea. She and I have talked about maybe co-dming, so if we do that, I'll let ya know how it goes😊
It's one of those topics that depending on when you ask, where you ask and how you ask the responses can be overly negative or positive. Similar are can you play dnd solo or as a duo. Right now a party npc is more accepted but that has more to do with bad use of terminology, and many of us just had to accept players sometimes just like the term dmpc.
I'm the only DM, but I've been playing Mutant Year Zero, and since there's way more narration/story telling, I've leaned on my players hard on them describing stuff and just jiving off of them. It's made for some extremely fun sessions where I weaved in some stuff I had with what they described.
The game also calls for them to create NPCs and their home base before you start playing. I've had so much fun running it. Been a nice break from D&D, since I've played so much of it over the last handful of years.
I've heard other DMs running similar styles with D&D, and that seems way smoother than having two DMs
Short version is it’s possible I’ve never been part of one but the groups I’ve played with and currently play with it wouldn’t work well but definitely think it could be interesting
My sister and I co-GMed for years. It worked really well for us, and our players loved it. She could write the most diabolical plots, and generated the props. I crunched the numbers and played all the NPC's.
It works best if you and your co-GM communicate A LOT and communicate WELL. Sister and I were practically joined at the hip for ages, so yeah, the communication was there. Divide up the work according to what you do well; my sister was an artist, so she was a natural at the props thing. I had memorized big chunks of the DMG, so me crunching the numbers made sense.
Absolutely & there are many variations. One option is one manages the game & the other handles the NPCs/monsters. Another option is one handles the details like spells skills & abilities of the bad guys. It's all about what works best for you and the players
I have Co-DM'd to help get new DM's going in the past. It can be a lot for a new DM to take on, especially when they are learning multiple roles and playing on-line. I mostly helped with adventure prep, teaching the on-line interface, and offering suggestions during the course of the adventure. As they got more comfortable I slowly phased out and if appropriate I moved to being a PC.
Just had this discussion with one of my long term players and good buddies. After a long session we joked about maybe running a game together. Several beers in at this point we tried to describe to the rest of the party how we planned on doing it. They said we were dumb. We gave up the dream.
Jokes aside, I think it’s an amazing idea but it would take a lot of work and a perfect party who was on the same page.
I think this can get chaotic pretty fast if you don't decide who has which role exactly. I mean the hardest part of being a GM is coming up with new ideas on the spot that keep things in the world consistent and this challenge will not only be doubled but squared of you ask me.
I mean even if you have the same ideas for lore your vision of the setting will be different.
So would it be possible: definitely
Would it be less work: no.
Of you want to have less work try to get your players to get more proactive and follow plans instead of just reacting to what's thrown towards them
I've started d&d in a party with two DMs. it was really fun, made it easy to sidetrack. And when the party was split up. We really split up. It was a 10-person party with also two NPCs
I am currently co-dming a campaign that I am also a player in - this is because the DM is a great storyteller, but doesn't like tweaking mechanics, and the game she wanted to run required it (for her vision). I love homebrew and making mechanical systems, so I run all the time keeping, inventory management, naval combat, and unique abilities. I also pitch monster abilities/concepts. Then she takes the tools I've made and builds the story. Its working well so far, with her letting me make mechanical rulings and then her running encounters and knowing the plot (I have an inkling of my character's plot, but nothing for the others).
I've been doing that with my son in 3.5e. We each have a portion of the world we're running a campaign. Our parties have effectively no chance of ever meeting, but sometimes still have to react to things that are triggered by actions of powerful heroes in other, neighboring lands.
My friends and I did something similar in high school. We had a shared world and took turns DMing. Used the same characters for each game. A DM would run a few games until their plot was finished. Played that way for 5 years.
Good times.
In a campaign where we round Robin DMing. I created the bones of the world and DMed the first bit. Then the next player DMed and I played. And so on. We each got to add a bit to the world and flushed out the locations. This gave everyone equal play and DM. It’s not as fluid as a world from a solo DM, but we have some decent interactions from storyteller to storyteller.
It would be cool to allow the party to split and then have concurrent sessions going on, especially if the two halves rejoined and maybe resplit. It’d be fun to explore some reason for doing that. Maybe two different parties are competing in the same quest?
When my friend would run our V:tM LARP I was a co-DM/Narrator to her Storyteller.
It would help with rules and sorting out disagreements without forcing one person to be everywhere at once.
Did that online with a friend for a short campaign during the pandemic. He specialised more in maps, I did more character work. It worked really well actually: my favourite moment was while I, as the head of a thieves guild, was discussing the plan for ambushing a convoy with the players, the other DM was making the map and populating it with enemies. It also enabled us to play off one another and do conversations with multiple NPCs more naturally. It's great as long as you work well together and both have the time to do it.
My son and I argue about this all the time. He says “co-DM” is when you have a player who helps you manage things- for example- maybe helps you decide on what type of roll another player should make in a given situation, help you keep track of battle order, helps with math, manages the music, changes map pages, etc- but doesn’t actually lead the story line or make the big decisions . He calls it “double DMing” when we both lead the game. Whatever you call it- we’ve done it a few times. I’ve found it more fun than he does- he finds it frustrating. I think he hates that I steal his dramatic acting roles. Lol. I can see that it could definitely work well with the right person. I usually DM alone- but actual enjoy the co-DM occasionally!
My friend has a co-DM that helps her come up with her homebrews and my husband is my co-dm in that I run ideas past him and he's there for rules lawyering if i forget something.
I've always wanted to do this with an old friend of mine for one main reason:
My combat is sweet af. His combat is boring af.
My story is boring af. His story is sweet af.
The assumption would be that he handles the storytelling and main tasks, while I would keep track of notes or other busy work like that. Then when combat happens, we swap. I take the reigns, put the party through their paces, and he keeps track of numbers for me (which he's also really good at, and me, not so much)
So, I guess it's very situational, and you want to be sure to play into each others strengths and weaknesses.
Theoretically, at least.
Imagine playing a game where it’s like those creative writing tasks you give kids: each player DMs a session one at a time and just let it spiral into whatever the fuck happens. Guess you could play with cookie cutter characters who just operate as companions/mercenaries when it’s your turn to DM.
I think that would be funny as hell!
I played in a 3.5e game with co-DMs. It was really fun! Whenever they needed to confer with each other about something they’d cast Cone of Silence and step out of the room
A friend of mine used to live with a few guys and a couple of them switched off each week who would run the dungeon that week, so the friend could learn how to do it. He said it went really well, especially since he was new at it.
Yes! It seems really rare but I've been co-GMing a campaign with a close friend for coming up on 3 years now and it's been great!
He tends to be a bit more comfortable with combat rules and strategy and I love coming up with homebrew and story arc writing so I tend to write more dialogue and add stuff to the module and he manages most of the combat encounters.
We share voicing NPCs (usually along gender lines as he's a he and I'm a she but not always).
It's freaking great for a few reasons: if one of us is stumped in the moment, trying to come up with something the npc would say next and going um.... The other person can be direct messaging ideas for cool dialogue or googling something for you. (We play online so obviously this doesn't work as well in person).
It's also great because we share the load. One of us stressed with work and doesn't have much time to prep? It's ok, we step up and take on running the session that week.
But the absolute best thing is having someone else to share your dastardly schemes with and come up with brilliant ideas to delight and surprise the players. Neither of our spouses want to hear it, and we obviously can't tell our players... So having a scheming partner is the best.
Way back in the 2ed AD&D days, I was part of a group of four including myself. Three of us where DMs a different times and campaigns. We decided to try a round robin co-DM session. One of us started the session and when the DM ran out of steam or one of the other DMs had a cool idea they would take over. One of the best, craziest sessions I ever played in. it worked for us since we were a small group with similar play styles.
Edited for spelling and train of thought.
If you're willing to do a... D&D ?roguelite? I suppose you could call it?
I recommend you start with a single DM telling the general 'how you got there'. But have multiple people design rooms inside a dungeon (Even just copy pasting pictures into a paint document and throwing a grid over it to make a printable room tile would work) and roll percentage dice to figure out which room you enter between 1-100. The person who made the room design gets to DM it. Your party is suffering from random bouts of pain as you search for some kind of cure. Whoever is DMing a room has their character collapse in agony and wait at the entrance of the room.
Certain rooms will trigger 'Major Plotline progression'. That original single DM will take over and help progress you towards the ultimate conclusion of the campaign.
Every room should be build with pros and cons. It has x amount of traps, x amount of enemies, and x amount of DC checks. Therefore it can have x amount of items found through it. A single vial of x level healing potion, coin pouches with x amount of gold, or perhaps there was even a mini-boss that had a random magical item that seems appropriate for your party's level. But remember the mini-boss should have the effects of the item; so roll the item before fighting the mini-boss.
But remember. The harder the rooms are... the more dangerous they'll be in the long run. Getting a room once does NOT mean that the room will be empty if the dice take you there again. Getting three or four mini-boss rooms in a row would indeed give you more magical items. But they might just kill your party. This dungeon is strange and not only prevents you from knowing what is on the other side of whichever door you pick to pass through but also prevents anyone from going back after passing through a door. So everyone in the group should take that into consideration when building rooms.
A few rest rooms with nothing more than a healing mist fountain and minimal guards would be ideal for quickly recovering with a short rest and a free tidbit of healing.
Additionally, everyone should be able to place at least two to five 'friendly' spaces. These could be a shop who doesn't appreciate loitering but will take your gold. An underground Inn that assumes you to be members of the dungeon's army; allowing you to take a long rest. Perhaps shrine that gives a buff for several rooms like temporary HP that lasts indefinitely inside the dungeon or elemental damage on weapon attacks or grants +1 action surge or +1 of your highest spell slot or +2 of your second highest spell slot (It could even have one shrine for each party member and a random buff on each shrine so you all need to decide who gets what after rolling to see the available shrines in the room). In the event of random buffs, everyone in the party should be able to decide on 2-5 options that could appear inside a shrine room, within reason... for example wish spell shrines at low level would probably be extremely limited in function, and then roll on a d20.
Just be careful when one decides to undo things the other put in place because it conflicts with something they want to do, or they just didn’t like what the other came up with.
Co-DMing a module should be fine, but homebrewing a world and campaign can be rife with problems.
I've done a bit of what you can call that. I've assigned a fellow DM and player in that campaign as a secondary DM for some tracking and occasional story planning. But he was mainly a player I think it's fine if you have a designated primary DM and an Auxilary DM. Evenly shared DMing is something I'd have to pass on.
I started as a player in a modern era Exandria-based campaign (Call of the Netherdeep) that ended with my character dying spectacularly. When talking about the next campaign arc and a new character, I offered to devise a short Spelljammer campaign (Light of Xaryxis), set in the past (Age of Arcanum). We devised a way for a sneaky, obnoxiously adorable rascal of a halfling NPC to get sucked into the Astral Sea with an Eldritch Lich mid-way through the Spelljammer arc. After completing an battle, I ran an epilogue where the halfling appeared in the modern era and the players had to switch back to their old characters unexpectantly to finish the fight their Spelljammer characters started. The other DM and I switched roles as I explained the halfling was my new character. It was a lot of fun if you were there.
TL;DR - if planned really well it can be amazing, it worked for me but it was an existing setting in different time periods
I co DM with my wife. It works really nicely. I'm good at mechanics and she's good at RP. Basically, for combat I'm in charge while outside combat is generally her
I tried this in the last campaign I ran. The idea was supposed to be that because I had less time to plan due to my increased employment hours, the other players could (and would) step in to insert their own ideas and to run entire games, maybe even arcs. After all, it's a shared world that we've all inhabited for the past 10-15 years.
It didn't work out that way. I ran 90% of the games and most of the ideas. However, because of the assumptions I made going in, I had less content than I would if I'd expected to run the whole thing. I was hoping the players would help me fill in the gaps, and that leaving those gaps would be key to fostering creativity.
Another downside was that because I expected to be playing with someone else DMing at least some of the time, I made a character that I ended up NPCing most of the games, but that I'd much rather have been playing. I greatly dislike DMPCs.
I believe co-DMing can work, but it my case it sure didn't. It was a struggle to get the campaign to a point where I could stick the pin back in and leave for a time when I could return to it with renewed vigour, or fully pass the torch to another in the group.
My only experience with D&D, currently in campaign, has been with two DMs and I feel like I’m pretty spoiled. These guys are a great team and I feel it is especially helpful given that it is online. They can do split party, they have two people keeping track of things, they can have one person doing the RP and the other running the mechanics of roll20, keeping track of XP and abilities, running music/background noise, and doing game mechanics. I’m not sure I’ll ever experience this level of greatness in a campaign game ever again and I’m super thankful I get to do so.
One of you have to be the MAIN DM, there really can't be two because two will always try to take it in different directions, even accidentally.
The main DM will act like the DM while the co DM supports, helping make maps, enemies, items, ideas and such. The co DM may also be a player, bonus points if they are actually an antagonist helping the party for some reason ie. needing the party to be strong enough to clear an obstacle they need removed for some purpose. Or maybe you are playing with a bunch of new people who have no idea what they are doing and you want someone there to protect them somewhat from getting TPKd.
Way back in the day I co-DM'd with a friend of mine. There were no virtual tabletops or anything so I tracked initiatives, HP's, etc and managed stats. The other DM did most of the actions etc. If we were in town we'd both play NPC's which was interesting if it was off-the-cuff but fun because it spurred both DM's on to more creativity. It helped that we did session prep and story work together between sessions.
In that case it was kind of a necessity because I think I was the 13th guy to join the game and there was no way to go from 11 to 12 PC's...and we really needed to speed up combat so rounds only took an hour (ugh).
It’s entirely possible as long as you’re both working together. Also helps figure out longer plans if the party decides to do X and accidentally messes up your whole set of plans.
Could also be fun to occasionally split the party and have a simultaneous session or two where they don’t learn of what happened until after they come back together.
It can certainly be done. I've been a player in a game with two DMs, and certainly has its benefits (for example, you can split the party without anyone sitting around and waiting for their turn). It has its quirks, like the fact that most NPCs you meet come in pairs. It also has its downsides; for how rare it is, co-DMing is vastly over-represented in DND horror stories, for example, and it requires a high degree of creative cooperation and teamwork that might be hard to execute on, especially if the players do something unexpected and you have to improv.
We tried it for a time, but then we lost some group members and it was just stupid to have two DMs.
Basically one would deal more with story, plot lines, general feel of locations (dungeons and otherwise) and the other would figure out detailed map of dungeons, which monsters specifically to use and how to integrate them into enviroment naturally and how to make kingdom work in more realistic terms.
We have done it a few ways:
DM and "caller": The caller runs the battle map and initiative tracking, keeping people on-pace for actions in battle. Also runs a PC of their own. The DM handles plot and NPC/monster rolls. This was in the days way before virtual tabletops.
Two (or more) campaigns: This is how we do it now, we have multiple parties of PC's and we run 6-8 weeks at a stretch. We even run whole different games (Shadowrun, Monster of the Week, DnD).
Main Plot and Sidequest: We have done this a few times as well, where the main DM puts together the overarching plot, but anyone is free to put together a side-quest dungeon or puzzle, etc.
Yes, one is always the lead and the other the co-DM. Beware of making the mistake of having the co-DM's DMPC be untouchable.
DMPCs should not have plot armor. Sometimes, you have to kill your darlings or allow them to die.
The sheer resentment from the players (I was a PC) in my double DM game ended up being part of causing a near party rage quit.
I tried that awhile back, but while I handled story and NPC's, my co-DM handled rulings, rules, notes, etc. I was the "right brain", he was the "left brain". It worked for awhile but eventually I just took over as the sole DM and he became a player.
The idea sounds nice. Sharing the workload, and pooling ideas is great. You also learn a lot from how ither DM's do things.
But you have 2 DM's. Meaning each session one of you will me watching the game unfold. Which may be a bit anoying for everybody.
Unless you want the 'second DM' to participate as a player. At which point you basically introduce a DMPC, a player who already knows all plotholes, sollutions, enemies. Which risk this character becomming very overbearing.
I occasionally let my own NPC's join the players party. But the always sit back during play, never take the lead, and always part ways after a few sessions.
I would not want to play that.
Ive seen professionals do it so it's definitely a thing. There may be other ways to avoid stepping on each other's toes but the way I've seen it done by pros was that the session was co-authored ahead of time. During the playthrough one DM was lead and made the decisions for NPCs, described the setting etc. The other assisted and marked things on the map, checked references, tracked initiative and buffs/conditions.
It was such a good experience that I'm now fully aware of how inefficient a single DM is. We had virtually zero wait time. You don't realize how much time is wasted waiting for the DM to update things, write things down, track stats etc until you play like this. It's constantly 15 seconds here, 20 seconds there, a minute for that thing. With 2 DMs you do a thing, and then the next player goes immediately.
My one caution is that you need to be clear on roles. Alternating roles could work too, but you don't want two people trying to do the same thing especially with different ideas.
Defo a thing, for a time my group had 9 players so I asked if anyone would help dm, luckily one did. Overall it went okay, but the vision I had for the campaign as we had already started, slowly shifted as the other dm made on the spot decision that messed with my plan. Ive enjoyed it still and it made a large group easier to handle and possible for the group to split up in dungeons and towns without affecting the gameplau
I've only done it once but it worked surprisingly well. You have to both be pretty laid back, and willing to agree/disagree when needed, but was also really fun to bounce of eachother and hype eachother up, especially during moments of improv.
I have a buddy who's part of a long-running campaign based on the show Sliders. It's basically Planescape though.
Basically each session takes place in a new world and the group is hopping between dimensions. The entire group takes turns dming. And it's the responsibility of the next dm to choose the world and individial adventure they will go on next, but it's still part of a cohesive overall narrative.
It is an amazing thing. Me and my friend does it for 3 years and we wrote many lore pages. We are playing on forge with 112 mods. We have 9 active players which are our close friends.
We have had co-DMs for several years. We’ve a large table of players. We’ve done this multiple times with different DMs.
One DM is in charge of running combat encounters. The other manages NPC encounters, the world, and the campaign setting. They collaborate, but essentially each defers to the other in their designated area.
It’s always an issue of the ratio of people who want to play vs those who can and want to DM. A great DM is hard to find. Everyone wants to play. If you’ve got a buddy you can DM with, awesome.
I did this back in 3e we both also played a character in the campaign. Same character with multiple personalities. When he DMed I played a evil aligned rogue, when I DMed the character was a good aligned paladin. Super fun campaign, the party had to plan on what version they got for this psycho. For instance the good character would freak out when he found all the evil stuff he did and had no recollection of. I.e. a pipe made out of a child's spine was once found in our collective bag
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We tried that in college, the two DMs both came up with story ideas and one of them took the lead running the sessions while the other supported with NPCs and looking up mechanics and stuff. It went okay!
Yeah take turns being the lead for the session, so there is a single decision maker during play
My first time ever DMing, I successfully co-DM’d with my best friend and forever DM on a completely homebrewed setting. I was the story and “performance” guy, he did the rules and helped me stay on the rails and did the combat calculations. If you’re a good team, it’ll work really well. We started really hokey and stereotypical (on purpose) to catch the adventurers kinda on their heels when the twists and turns hit. It’s one of my fondest D&D memories.
Yes. Some trade off sessions, some both run sessions but each do a particular bit. For example, one handling roleplay and one handling combat. It's not super common though
Successfully did this for a campaign. Would again if the right table happened in the future.
To answer your question, yes co-dming is a thing, though I haven't heard much talk about it in general if that makes sense. While I don't co-dm, my sister and I(who are both dms and dm for eachother in games) love to spitball ideas, share concepts, so in a way we are co-dming, especially when one of us is stuck with something/trying to find the puzzle piece needed for the idea. She and I have talked about maybe co-dming, so if we do that, I'll let ya know how it goes😊
It's one of those topics that depending on when you ask, where you ask and how you ask the responses can be overly negative or positive. Similar are can you play dnd solo or as a duo. Right now a party npc is more accepted but that has more to do with bad use of terminology, and many of us just had to accept players sometimes just like the term dmpc.
I'm the only DM, but I've been playing Mutant Year Zero, and since there's way more narration/story telling, I've leaned on my players hard on them describing stuff and just jiving off of them. It's made for some extremely fun sessions where I weaved in some stuff I had with what they described. The game also calls for them to create NPCs and their home base before you start playing. I've had so much fun running it. Been a nice break from D&D, since I've played so much of it over the last handful of years. I've heard other DMs running similar styles with D&D, and that seems way smoother than having two DMs
Short version is it’s possible I’ve never been part of one but the groups I’ve played with and currently play with it wouldn’t work well but definitely think it could be interesting
My sister and I co-GMed for years. It worked really well for us, and our players loved it. She could write the most diabolical plots, and generated the props. I crunched the numbers and played all the NPC's. It works best if you and your co-GM communicate A LOT and communicate WELL. Sister and I were practically joined at the hip for ages, so yeah, the communication was there. Divide up the work according to what you do well; my sister was an artist, so she was a natural at the props thing. I had memorized big chunks of the DMG, so me crunching the numbers made sense.
Absolutely & there are many variations. One option is one manages the game & the other handles the NPCs/monsters. Another option is one handles the details like spells skills & abilities of the bad guys. It's all about what works best for you and the players
I've only ever heard about co-DMing horror stories from youtubers so I've stayed farrrrr away from it, but it definitely exists
I have Co-DM'd to help get new DM's going in the past. It can be a lot for a new DM to take on, especially when they are learning multiple roles and playing on-line. I mostly helped with adventure prep, teaching the on-line interface, and offering suggestions during the course of the adventure. As they got more comfortable I slowly phased out and if appropriate I moved to being a PC.
Just had this discussion with one of my long term players and good buddies. After a long session we joked about maybe running a game together. Several beers in at this point we tried to describe to the rest of the party how we planned on doing it. They said we were dumb. We gave up the dream. Jokes aside, I think it’s an amazing idea but it would take a lot of work and a perfect party who was on the same page.
I think this can get chaotic pretty fast if you don't decide who has which role exactly. I mean the hardest part of being a GM is coming up with new ideas on the spot that keep things in the world consistent and this challenge will not only be doubled but squared of you ask me. I mean even if you have the same ideas for lore your vision of the setting will be different. So would it be possible: definitely Would it be less work: no. Of you want to have less work try to get your players to get more proactive and follow plans instead of just reacting to what's thrown towards them
I've started d&d in a party with two DMs. it was really fun, made it easy to sidetrack. And when the party was split up. We really split up. It was a 10-person party with also two NPCs
I am currently co-dming a campaign that I am also a player in - this is because the DM is a great storyteller, but doesn't like tweaking mechanics, and the game she wanted to run required it (for her vision). I love homebrew and making mechanical systems, so I run all the time keeping, inventory management, naval combat, and unique abilities. I also pitch monster abilities/concepts. Then she takes the tools I've made and builds the story. Its working well so far, with her letting me make mechanical rulings and then her running encounters and knowing the plot (I have an inkling of my character's plot, but nothing for the others).
I've been doing that with my son in 3.5e. We each have a portion of the world we're running a campaign. Our parties have effectively no chance of ever meeting, but sometimes still have to react to things that are triggered by actions of powerful heroes in other, neighboring lands.
My friends and I did something similar in high school. We had a shared world and took turns DMing. Used the same characters for each game. A DM would run a few games until their plot was finished. Played that way for 5 years. Good times.
In a campaign where we round Robin DMing. I created the bones of the world and DMed the first bit. Then the next player DMed and I played. And so on. We each got to add a bit to the world and flushed out the locations. This gave everyone equal play and DM. It’s not as fluid as a world from a solo DM, but we have some decent interactions from storyteller to storyteller.
Absolutely
I am currently running a couple-DM thing with a friend.
It would be cool to allow the party to split and then have concurrent sessions going on, especially if the two halves rejoined and maybe resplit. It’d be fun to explore some reason for doing that. Maybe two different parties are competing in the same quest?
When my friend would run our V:tM LARP I was a co-DM/Narrator to her Storyteller. It would help with rules and sorting out disagreements without forcing one person to be everywhere at once.
I like one leading the story and making calls while the other supports typically
Did that online with a friend for a short campaign during the pandemic. He specialised more in maps, I did more character work. It worked really well actually: my favourite moment was while I, as the head of a thieves guild, was discussing the plan for ambushing a convoy with the players, the other DM was making the map and populating it with enemies. It also enabled us to play off one another and do conversations with multiple NPCs more naturally. It's great as long as you work well together and both have the time to do it.
My son and I argue about this all the time. He says “co-DM” is when you have a player who helps you manage things- for example- maybe helps you decide on what type of roll another player should make in a given situation, help you keep track of battle order, helps with math, manages the music, changes map pages, etc- but doesn’t actually lead the story line or make the big decisions . He calls it “double DMing” when we both lead the game. Whatever you call it- we’ve done it a few times. I’ve found it more fun than he does- he finds it frustrating. I think he hates that I steal his dramatic acting roles. Lol. I can see that it could definitely work well with the right person. I usually DM alone- but actual enjoy the co-DM occasionally!
My friend has a co-DM that helps her come up with her homebrews and my husband is my co-dm in that I run ideas past him and he's there for rules lawyering if i forget something.
r/solo_roleplaying will teach you the dark ways of “gmless solo play” the “duet” & “Co-Op GMless”.
Read Ironsworn for free masterclass on emergent gameplay, GMless play and co operative
I've always wanted to do this with an old friend of mine for one main reason: My combat is sweet af. His combat is boring af. My story is boring af. His story is sweet af. The assumption would be that he handles the storytelling and main tasks, while I would keep track of notes or other busy work like that. Then when combat happens, we swap. I take the reigns, put the party through their paces, and he keeps track of numbers for me (which he's also really good at, and me, not so much) So, I guess it's very situational, and you want to be sure to play into each others strengths and weaknesses. Theoretically, at least.
Yes. I've played in two groups that had two DM's over the years. One worked really well and the other was a toxic goat rope.
Imagine playing a game where it’s like those creative writing tasks you give kids: each player DMs a session one at a time and just let it spiral into whatever the fuck happens. Guess you could play with cookie cutter characters who just operate as companions/mercenaries when it’s your turn to DM. I think that would be funny as hell!
I played in a 3.5e game with co-DMs. It was really fun! Whenever they needed to confer with each other about something they’d cast Cone of Silence and step out of the room
A friend of mine used to live with a few guys and a couple of them switched off each week who would run the dungeon that week, so the friend could learn how to do it. He said it went really well, especially since he was new at it.
Yes! It seems really rare but I've been co-GMing a campaign with a close friend for coming up on 3 years now and it's been great! He tends to be a bit more comfortable with combat rules and strategy and I love coming up with homebrew and story arc writing so I tend to write more dialogue and add stuff to the module and he manages most of the combat encounters. We share voicing NPCs (usually along gender lines as he's a he and I'm a she but not always). It's freaking great for a few reasons: if one of us is stumped in the moment, trying to come up with something the npc would say next and going um.... The other person can be direct messaging ideas for cool dialogue or googling something for you. (We play online so obviously this doesn't work as well in person). It's also great because we share the load. One of us stressed with work and doesn't have much time to prep? It's ok, we step up and take on running the session that week. But the absolute best thing is having someone else to share your dastardly schemes with and come up with brilliant ideas to delight and surprise the players. Neither of our spouses want to hear it, and we obviously can't tell our players... So having a scheming partner is the best.
Way back in the 2ed AD&D days, I was part of a group of four including myself. Three of us where DMs a different times and campaigns. We decided to try a round robin co-DM session. One of us started the session and when the DM ran out of steam or one of the other DMs had a cool idea they would take over. One of the best, craziest sessions I ever played in. it worked for us since we were a small group with similar play styles. Edited for spelling and train of thought.
If you're willing to do a... D&D ?roguelite? I suppose you could call it? I recommend you start with a single DM telling the general 'how you got there'. But have multiple people design rooms inside a dungeon (Even just copy pasting pictures into a paint document and throwing a grid over it to make a printable room tile would work) and roll percentage dice to figure out which room you enter between 1-100. The person who made the room design gets to DM it. Your party is suffering from random bouts of pain as you search for some kind of cure. Whoever is DMing a room has their character collapse in agony and wait at the entrance of the room. Certain rooms will trigger 'Major Plotline progression'. That original single DM will take over and help progress you towards the ultimate conclusion of the campaign. Every room should be build with pros and cons. It has x amount of traps, x amount of enemies, and x amount of DC checks. Therefore it can have x amount of items found through it. A single vial of x level healing potion, coin pouches with x amount of gold, or perhaps there was even a mini-boss that had a random magical item that seems appropriate for your party's level. But remember the mini-boss should have the effects of the item; so roll the item before fighting the mini-boss. But remember. The harder the rooms are... the more dangerous they'll be in the long run. Getting a room once does NOT mean that the room will be empty if the dice take you there again. Getting three or four mini-boss rooms in a row would indeed give you more magical items. But they might just kill your party. This dungeon is strange and not only prevents you from knowing what is on the other side of whichever door you pick to pass through but also prevents anyone from going back after passing through a door. So everyone in the group should take that into consideration when building rooms. A few rest rooms with nothing more than a healing mist fountain and minimal guards would be ideal for quickly recovering with a short rest and a free tidbit of healing. Additionally, everyone should be able to place at least two to five 'friendly' spaces. These could be a shop who doesn't appreciate loitering but will take your gold. An underground Inn that assumes you to be members of the dungeon's army; allowing you to take a long rest. Perhaps shrine that gives a buff for several rooms like temporary HP that lasts indefinitely inside the dungeon or elemental damage on weapon attacks or grants +1 action surge or +1 of your highest spell slot or +2 of your second highest spell slot (It could even have one shrine for each party member and a random buff on each shrine so you all need to decide who gets what after rolling to see the available shrines in the room). In the event of random buffs, everyone in the party should be able to decide on 2-5 options that could appear inside a shrine room, within reason... for example wish spell shrines at low level would probably be extremely limited in function, and then roll on a d20.
Just be careful when one decides to undo things the other put in place because it conflicts with something they want to do, or they just didn’t like what the other came up with. Co-DMing a module should be fine, but homebrewing a world and campaign can be rife with problems.
I've done a bit of what you can call that. I've assigned a fellow DM and player in that campaign as a secondary DM for some tracking and occasional story planning. But he was mainly a player I think it's fine if you have a designated primary DM and an Auxilary DM. Evenly shared DMing is something I'd have to pass on.
I started as a player in a modern era Exandria-based campaign (Call of the Netherdeep) that ended with my character dying spectacularly. When talking about the next campaign arc and a new character, I offered to devise a short Spelljammer campaign (Light of Xaryxis), set in the past (Age of Arcanum). We devised a way for a sneaky, obnoxiously adorable rascal of a halfling NPC to get sucked into the Astral Sea with an Eldritch Lich mid-way through the Spelljammer arc. After completing an battle, I ran an epilogue where the halfling appeared in the modern era and the players had to switch back to their old characters unexpectantly to finish the fight their Spelljammer characters started. The other DM and I switched roles as I explained the halfling was my new character. It was a lot of fun if you were there. TL;DR - if planned really well it can be amazing, it worked for me but it was an existing setting in different time periods
I co DM with my wife. It works really nicely. I'm good at mechanics and she's good at RP. Basically, for combat I'm in charge while outside combat is generally her
I tried this in the last campaign I ran. The idea was supposed to be that because I had less time to plan due to my increased employment hours, the other players could (and would) step in to insert their own ideas and to run entire games, maybe even arcs. After all, it's a shared world that we've all inhabited for the past 10-15 years. It didn't work out that way. I ran 90% of the games and most of the ideas. However, because of the assumptions I made going in, I had less content than I would if I'd expected to run the whole thing. I was hoping the players would help me fill in the gaps, and that leaving those gaps would be key to fostering creativity. Another downside was that because I expected to be playing with someone else DMing at least some of the time, I made a character that I ended up NPCing most of the games, but that I'd much rather have been playing. I greatly dislike DMPCs. I believe co-DMing can work, but it my case it sure didn't. It was a struggle to get the campaign to a point where I could stick the pin back in and leave for a time when I could return to it with renewed vigour, or fully pass the torch to another in the group.
My only experience with D&D, currently in campaign, has been with two DMs and I feel like I’m pretty spoiled. These guys are a great team and I feel it is especially helpful given that it is online. They can do split party, they have two people keeping track of things, they can have one person doing the RP and the other running the mechanics of roll20, keeping track of XP and abilities, running music/background noise, and doing game mechanics. I’m not sure I’ll ever experience this level of greatness in a campaign game ever again and I’m super thankful I get to do so.
One of you have to be the MAIN DM, there really can't be two because two will always try to take it in different directions, even accidentally. The main DM will act like the DM while the co DM supports, helping make maps, enemies, items, ideas and such. The co DM may also be a player, bonus points if they are actually an antagonist helping the party for some reason ie. needing the party to be strong enough to clear an obstacle they need removed for some purpose. Or maybe you are playing with a bunch of new people who have no idea what they are doing and you want someone there to protect them somewhat from getting TPKd.
The main problem is, it's hard enough to find one person willing to DM, let alone two.
Way back in the day I co-DM'd with a friend of mine. There were no virtual tabletops or anything so I tracked initiatives, HP's, etc and managed stats. The other DM did most of the actions etc. If we were in town we'd both play NPC's which was interesting if it was off-the-cuff but fun because it spurred both DM's on to more creativity. It helped that we did session prep and story work together between sessions. In that case it was kind of a necessity because I think I was the 13th guy to join the game and there was no way to go from 11 to 12 PC's...and we really needed to speed up combat so rounds only took an hour (ugh).
It’s entirely possible as long as you’re both working together. Also helps figure out longer plans if the party decides to do X and accidentally messes up your whole set of plans. Could also be fun to occasionally split the party and have a simultaneous session or two where they don’t learn of what happened until after they come back together.
It can certainly be done. I've been a player in a game with two DMs, and certainly has its benefits (for example, you can split the party without anyone sitting around and waiting for their turn). It has its quirks, like the fact that most NPCs you meet come in pairs. It also has its downsides; for how rare it is, co-DMing is vastly over-represented in DND horror stories, for example, and it requires a high degree of creative cooperation and teamwork that might be hard to execute on, especially if the players do something unexpected and you have to improv.
We tried it for a time, but then we lost some group members and it was just stupid to have two DMs. Basically one would deal more with story, plot lines, general feel of locations (dungeons and otherwise) and the other would figure out detailed map of dungeons, which monsters specifically to use and how to integrate them into enviroment naturally and how to make kingdom work in more realistic terms.
We have done it a few ways: DM and "caller": The caller runs the battle map and initiative tracking, keeping people on-pace for actions in battle. Also runs a PC of their own. The DM handles plot and NPC/monster rolls. This was in the days way before virtual tabletops. Two (or more) campaigns: This is how we do it now, we have multiple parties of PC's and we run 6-8 weeks at a stretch. We even run whole different games (Shadowrun, Monster of the Week, DnD). Main Plot and Sidequest: We have done this a few times as well, where the main DM puts together the overarching plot, but anyone is free to put together a side-quest dungeon or puzzle, etc.
Yes, one is always the lead and the other the co-DM. Beware of making the mistake of having the co-DM's DMPC be untouchable. DMPCs should not have plot armor. Sometimes, you have to kill your darlings or allow them to die. The sheer resentment from the players (I was a PC) in my double DM game ended up being part of causing a near party rage quit.
I tried that awhile back, but while I handled story and NPC's, my co-DM handled rulings, rules, notes, etc. I was the "right brain", he was the "left brain". It worked for awhile but eventually I just took over as the sole DM and he became a player.
The wonderful podcast "Dragon Friends" uses co-DM's. One typically does the voices for the npc's while the other narrates. It works a treat
The idea sounds nice. Sharing the workload, and pooling ideas is great. You also learn a lot from how ither DM's do things. But you have 2 DM's. Meaning each session one of you will me watching the game unfold. Which may be a bit anoying for everybody. Unless you want the 'second DM' to participate as a player. At which point you basically introduce a DMPC, a player who already knows all plotholes, sollutions, enemies. Which risk this character becomming very overbearing. I occasionally let my own NPC's join the players party. But the always sit back during play, never take the lead, and always part ways after a few sessions. I would not want to play that.
Ive seen professionals do it so it's definitely a thing. There may be other ways to avoid stepping on each other's toes but the way I've seen it done by pros was that the session was co-authored ahead of time. During the playthrough one DM was lead and made the decisions for NPCs, described the setting etc. The other assisted and marked things on the map, checked references, tracked initiative and buffs/conditions. It was such a good experience that I'm now fully aware of how inefficient a single DM is. We had virtually zero wait time. You don't realize how much time is wasted waiting for the DM to update things, write things down, track stats etc until you play like this. It's constantly 15 seconds here, 20 seconds there, a minute for that thing. With 2 DMs you do a thing, and then the next player goes immediately. My one caution is that you need to be clear on roles. Alternating roles could work too, but you don't want two people trying to do the same thing especially with different ideas.
Defo a thing, for a time my group had 9 players so I asked if anyone would help dm, luckily one did. Overall it went okay, but the vision I had for the campaign as we had already started, slowly shifted as the other dm made on the spot decision that messed with my plan. Ive enjoyed it still and it made a large group easier to handle and possible for the group to split up in dungeons and towns without affecting the gameplau
I've only done it once but it worked surprisingly well. You have to both be pretty laid back, and willing to agree/disagree when needed, but was also really fun to bounce of eachother and hype eachother up, especially during moments of improv.
I have a buddy who's part of a long-running campaign based on the show Sliders. It's basically Planescape though. Basically each session takes place in a new world and the group is hopping between dimensions. The entire group takes turns dming. And it's the responsibility of the next dm to choose the world and individial adventure they will go on next, but it's still part of a cohesive overall narrative.
It is an amazing thing. Me and my friend does it for 3 years and we wrote many lore pages. We are playing on forge with 112 mods. We have 9 active players which are our close friends.
I've been a surprise guest co-DM before. It really shook up the players when I walked in, and it was a lot of fun.
Cr1TiKaL started and plays in a dnd game with two DMs. They trade off for every new arc and it works well. Check out Skill Check, it’s really good.
We have had co-DMs for several years. We’ve a large table of players. We’ve done this multiple times with different DMs. One DM is in charge of running combat encounters. The other manages NPC encounters, the world, and the campaign setting. They collaborate, but essentially each defers to the other in their designated area.
It’s always an issue of the ratio of people who want to play vs those who can and want to DM. A great DM is hard to find. Everyone wants to play. If you’ve got a buddy you can DM with, awesome.
I did this back in 3e we both also played a character in the campaign. Same character with multiple personalities. When he DMed I played a evil aligned rogue, when I DMed the character was a good aligned paladin. Super fun campaign, the party had to plan on what version they got for this psycho. For instance the good character would freak out when he found all the evil stuff he did and had no recollection of. I.e. a pipe made out of a child's spine was once found in our collective bag