Hi, having GM burnout is common for post TTRPG groups. One solution I've thought is with Suzerain's many realms, just letting a player and the GM swap out and run a one-shot in a different realm.

Now lore-wise, it's sound, no worries there, it's more the technical side of passing on the 'GM hat' as it where.

Question: What's a good way to summerise and organise story elements/locations/characters etc. to be passed to another GM for a one-off session that can be within the same world but not directly affect the main campaign? Is it best to just give a list of "try not to kill these people and stay away from these areas if possible" or is that too limiting? is it best to do a flashback one-shot? or to keep everything but the characters the same?

Quote from: CM_Suzerain;1144552Hi, having GM burnout is common for post TTRPG groups. One solution I've thought is with Suzerain's many realms, just letting a player and the GM swap out and run a one-shot in a different realm.

Now lore-wise, it's sound, no worries there, it's more the technical side of passing on the 'GM hat' as it where.

Question: What's a good way to summerise and organise story elements/locations/characters etc. to be passed to another GM for a one-off session that can be within the same world but not directly affect the main campaign? Is it best to just give a list of "try not to kill these people and stay away from these areas if possible" or is that too limiting? is it best to do a flashback one-shot? or to keep everything but the characters the same?

Man, I haven't done rotating GMs in a long time. If I remember correctly, we didn't sweat it that much. If a GM killed off an "important" NPC, the GM affected would just roll with it.

I did a one shot for my brother's campaign recently so he could play. I didn't touch his world setup, and made my adventure a kind of "side-story" in-between other adventures. "While you were travelling to Greyhawk, this happened..."
My one big concern with it being a kind of flashback, is if a character died, but my brother said "I can handle it", so I just ran the damn thing.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1144556Man, I haven't done rotating GMs in a long time. If I remember correctly, we didn't sweat it that much. If a GM killed off an "important" NPC, the GM affected would just roll with it.

I did a one shot for my brother's campaign recently so he could play. I didn't touch his world setup, and made my adventure a kind of "side-story" in-between other adventures. "While you were travelling to Greyhawk, this happened..."
My one big concern with it being a kind of flashback, is if a character died, but my brother said "I can handle it", so I just ran the damn thing.

Thank you dude, I guess I'm just anxious. I'm doing this mostly because as part of my job I get to run community games. It's been a good while since I've DM'd and I'm suuuuper new to the Suzerain setting and the Savage Worlds ruleset. I love them, just yeah, the GM performance anxiety never ends!

It gets considerably easier to manage if every GM has their own section of the world, AND there is a common area that the GMs agree to not change drastically.  Ideally, the common area is geographically central--or whatever amounts to the same thing as far as character movement (say, a hub of portals if that's a feature of the campaign).  The common area need not be huge.  Even a sizable town in the right place can work.  It just needs a good reason to be stable.

Otherwise, you get into trouble with the transitions of a player character from one GM area to another GM area.

Our group did a stint with rotating GMs. The new GM continued on with the events the player characters had already been involved with and had helped shape, but a few issues crept into the game. The most disruptive was he created some new house rules and did away with some RAW. This caused quite a bit of confusion as some of the players actively used those rules. What was just as annoying was when it became my turn again, I went back to RAW.

Over the years I've done a lot of shared GMing. I can't think of any significant problems that have occurred.

As Steve said, if each GM has their own area of the game world there isn't much information that needs to be handed off or parts of the world that need to be protected.

It's also easier if the players run different PCs with each GM, though that isn't always practical and doing so may eliminate some of the appeal of shared GMing. If the PCs are the same, a little thought needs to go into what happens to the PC of the GM who is running that session. It's easiest if the GM's own PC isn't part of the adventure that the GM is running.

It's almost essential to agree on what the rules will be used (house or otherwise). Minor differences aren't usually a problem, but major rule changes are apt to be jarring and cause friction.

Quote from: CM_Suzerain;1144552Question: What's a good way to summerise and organise story elements/locations/characters etc. to be passed to another GM for a one-off session that can be within the same world but not directly affect the main campaign? Is it best to just give a list of "try not to kill these people and stay away from these areas if possible" or is that too limiting? is it best to do a flashback one-shot? or to keep everything but the characters the same?

If you check out the first few books in the _Thieves World_ shared fiction anthology series, there are essays that address this aspect of the writing process that might be useful analogues for rotating DMs.  Some of that material was reprinted in the Thieves World boxed set (1983 Chaosium), but some was just in the books.

Allan.

Quote from: grodog;1144652If you check out the first few books in the _Thieves World_ shared fiction anthology series, there are essays that address this aspect of the writing process that might be useful analogues for rotating DMs.  Some of that material was reprinted in the Thieves World boxed set (1983 Chaosium), but some was just in the books.

Allan.

That's good to know! Thank you!

We rotate GMs a lot and never had any problems. Overall, it works better if you do not get too attached to the world and NPCs, and with a more sandbox or player-driven playstyle rather than railroads or strongly scripted stories. It's cool to tap on what earlier GMs have built and give your own spin to it. It's like improv storytelling in a way: that dark tower the previous GM put on the map planning to be some antagonist's domain may become some helpful reclusive NPC hold by a new GM. Or, if one prefers, there's no problem passing along some notes saying "that dark tower belongs to an antagonist NPC" to the next GM. As long as the group cultivates this open mindset about the world being a colaborative creation, it will work fine.

Also, some games come with the concept built-in and may have specific advice. Take a look at Blades in the Dark or Ars Magica, for eg.

Quote from: Itachi;1144708We rotate GMs a lot and never had any problems. Overall, it works better if you do not get too attached to the world and NPCs, and with a more sandbox or player-driven playstyle rather than railroads or strongly scripted stories. It's cool to tap on what earlier GMs have built and give your own spin to it. It's like improv storytelling in a way: that dark tower the previous GM put on the map planning to be some antagonist's domain may become some helpful reclusive NPC hold by a new GM. Or, if one prefers, there's no problem passing along some notes saying "that dark tower belongs to an antagonist NPC" to the next GM. As long as the group cultivates this open mindset about the world being a colaborative creation, it will work fine.

Also, some games come with the concept built-in and may have specific advice. Take a look at Blades in the Dark or Ars Magica, for eg.

I'll check them out, thanks!

Ars Magica was very innovative in its approaches to how the role-playing sessions are run/structured---in addition to rotating GMs, it introduced Troupe Style play (in which players have primary and secondary tiered characters, with the secondaries tied to other players' primaries), and the idea of "grogs" as shared NPC resources that would be played by all of the players as needed, and the concept of a "group character" for the overall PC group (called a Covenant in ArM; there's a lot more that goes into that concept/structure too), and leveraged campaign seasonal time in a manner similar to Pendragon.

And that's all on top of the best-designed magic system ever published in an RPG.  Well-worth your time to dig into, and you can download the 4th edition rulebook for free at https://www.atlas-games.com/product_tables/AG0204 =)

Allan.

Quote from: grodog;1144901Ars Magica was very innovative in its approaches to how the role-playing sessions are run/structured---in addition to rotating GMs, it introduced Troupe Style play (in which players have primary and secondary tiered characters, with the secondaries tied to other players' primaries), and the idea of "grogs" as shared NPC resources that would be played by all of the players as needed, and the concept of a "group character" for the overall PC group (called a Covenant in ArM; there's a lot more that goes into that concept/structure too), and leveraged campaign seasonal time in a manner similar to Pendragon.

And that's all on top of the best-designed magic system ever published in an RPG.  Well-worth your time to dig into, and you can download the 4th edition rulebook for free at https://www.atlas-games.com/product_tables/AG0204 =)

Allan.

Thanks! Give me something to look into over the weekend