Yo! so i had a question pop in my head. what if you had a DM who was great at story telling and backgrounds and stuff and interweaving it into the story but bad at running combat with fighters being a cake walk or almost TPKs Then you had a DM who wasnt that could at story telling but amazing at making balanced combat and fun engaging combats that arent just bonk slogs. you then put them together to Dual DM a campaign and while one can work their magic in their area while the other works their magic in theirs.
ik ik it would prob be rough at first but has anyone tried it? in that way not just dual DMing. if so id love to hear your story! the pros and cons it had over normal DMing
At one point, I was running a West Marches-style campaign that had four different, active DMs.
This allowed us to take on over 30 active players and was a ton of fun. Key things that made it work were communication and a spreadsheet so we knew who got EXP, etc. from where. Basically, if the DMs work on being a team, it can be great!
I think in the OP’s example, planning would be the big problem. The story DM would need to tell the fighting DM when there will be combats, what the terrain will be like, who the enemies will be, etc. But then the fighting DM would know about these upcoming fights. So it would be hard to surprise them and they’d know where the story expects them to go. So when the fighting DM is a player, and the party is trying to decide do we go through the forest or the swamp, that fighting DM knows they built a forest fight, so they know what’s coming.
And similarly, if you’re in a fight where the win condition isn’t just kill all the bad guys, they’ll know exactly what they need to do, because that’s basically a story element in the the combat.
Yes, the DMs could just keep their mouths shut during such times — like which way to go. But then two things happens, first, they’re not really a full member of the party, as they don’t get to participate in the decisions. Second, when they suddenly stop talking, everyone else knows something is up. So overall, it seems like it would lead to a lot of meta gaming.
I think the better solution would be similar to what agile DM is saying. Take turns with each one running an arc or a short campaign. Then hopefully, they can learn from each other and become better DMs.
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Yo! so i had a question pop in my head. what if you had a DM who was great at story telling and backgrounds and stuff and interweaving it into the story but bad at running combat with fighters being a cake walk or almost TPKs Then you had a DM who wasnt that could at story telling but amazing at making balanced combat and fun engaging combats that arent just bonk slogs. you then put them together to Dual DM a campaign and while one can work their magic in their area while the other works their magic in theirs.
ik ik it would prob be rough at first but has anyone tried it? in that way not just dual DMing. if so id love to hear your story! the pros and cons it had over normal DMing
At one point, I was running a West Marches-style campaign that had four different, active DMs.
This allowed us to take on over 30 active players and was a ton of fun. Key things that made it work were communication and a spreadsheet so we knew who got EXP, etc. from where. Basically, if the DMs work on being a team, it can be great!
I think in the OP’s example, planning would be the big problem. The story DM would need to tell the fighting DM when there will be combats, what the terrain will be like, who the enemies will be, etc. But then the fighting DM would know about these upcoming fights. So it would be hard to surprise them and they’d know where the story expects them to go. So when the fighting DM is a player, and the party is trying to decide do we go through the forest or the swamp, that fighting DM knows they built a forest fight, so they know what’s coming.
And similarly, if you’re in a fight where the win condition isn’t just kill all the bad guys, they’ll know exactly what they need to do, because that’s basically a story element in the the combat.
Yes, the DMs could just keep their mouths shut during such times — like which way to go. But then two things happens, first, they’re not really a full member of the party, as they don’t get to participate in the decisions. Second, when they suddenly stop talking, everyone else knows something is up. So overall, it seems like it would lead to a lot of meta gaming.
I think the better solution would be similar to what agile DM is saying. Take turns with each one running an arc or a short campaign. Then hopefully, they can learn from each other and become better DMs.