Has anyone tried "round robin" games, where each player becomes the GM for a follow on scenario?
A group I played with did this with Golden Heroes rpg. Each player had to write and GM the next scenario, which was left a cliff hanger ending, until the person who owned the game did the last scenario and had to wrap up the entire thing.It was entertaining for our group but we never decided on doing it with another game again.

How did you handle issues of balance?

Were the GMs formally limited in what they could throw at the party?
Was there fudging?
Did the rules themselves do anything to allow PCs to cope with bad GM judgment or bad luck?
How did players handle setbacks which arose from bad judgment or bad luck, if the rules didn't completely solve the problem?

I was in a DC Heroes group like that in college.

It was very cool- the buy-in for joining the group was you had to GM the session in which your character was introduced. Other than that, there were two "main" GMs, and every once in a while, someone else in the group would GM if they had something prepared.

I've never found this to work particularly well.

One campaign; one GM; that seems to be the best way to work RPGs.  If you want variety in who GMs your gaming group, I think its much more productive to run more than one campaign, and have different GMs for each campaign.

RPGPundit

Quote from: AnthrobotHas anyone tried "round robin" games, where each player becomes the GM for a follow on scenario?
A group I played with did this with Golden Heroes rpg. Each player had to write and GM the next scenario, which was left a cliff hanger ending, until the person who owned the game did the last scenario and had to wrap up the entire thing.It was entertaining for our group but we never decided on doing it with another game again.

You mean like RUNE where everyone takes a shot at being a Game Master?  See that didnt go over with me very well and really stuck in my craw.

That rule and the fact I couldn't find anyone interested in playing made me get rid of that game really quickly.

I would be very careful before I would consider a game like that again.  The round robin rules would have to be really steller to make me consider it.

We've done it a lot in our group, mostly with Shadowrun but also with other systems. It works great, although we never did the Cliffhanger Ending stuff. It was always one complete scenario per GM.

QuoteHow did you handle issues of balance?

Were the GMs formally limited in what they could throw at the party?
Was there fudging?
Did the rules themselves do anything to allow PCs to cope with bad GM judgment or bad luck?
How did players handle setbacks which arose from bad judgment or bad luck, if the rules didn't completely solve the problem?

We handled all those problems the same way we do with single GM games: only play with people we like and trust.

Yup, in a low-magic fantasy game using Gurps.  Three alternating GMs.

Consistency became an issue, one introduced orcs and a magical chaos vortex, which was fairly cool as he did it but sat oddly with the next guy whose kingdom had no magic to speak of at all.

Consistency is the issue I've found.

I've done it often, but only in extremely contained, three or four day marathon sessions.  Two of us trade off - we each have a very general idea of where we'll hand things over.

Really good times, some of the best ever around a table, but I've only done it with a couple of people I've known and trusted for a long period.

This also sounds like an excuse for opium abuse.

We've had games where we had three folks change out as GM every couple of months.  Not every player was interested in running the game so only those few ran it.  

The main thing we had to do was discuss the overall world view of the game with each other before hand.  What we can and can't mess with, reality views and all that, just to keep the setting smooth.  But it really did help with preventing GM burnout as well as player burnout.

One local Champions campaign in the late eighties/early nineties featured a rotating GM system.  It didn't work as well as I would have liked, because many GMs felt a sense of ownership towards some of the NPCs and plot threads, but the mechanisms for distributing control of those things were ill-defined.

Right now I'm part of a one-shot club.  Each month a different person runs a game of their choice.  While that lacks any continuity besides the roster of players, this arrangement allows everyone to play AND they can run whatever game they want.

Quote from: RPGPunditI've never found this to work particularly well.

One campaign; one GM; that seems to be the best way to work RPGs.  If you want variety in who GMs your gaming group, I think its much more productive to run more than one campaign, and have different GMs for each campaign.

RPGPundit

The round robin games were fun if you wanted to try your hand at writing a scenario set in someone else's universe. However since none of us did any more it shows that one campaign, one GM is better.

Quote from: Elliot WilenHow did you handle issues of balance?

Were the GMs formally limited in what they could throw at the party?
Was there fudging?
Did the rules themselves do anything to allow PCs to cope with bad GM judgment or bad luck?
How did players handle setbacks which arose from bad judgment or bad luck, if the rules didn't completely solve the problem?

We assumed every player was mature enough to balance the game they GMed.
The GMs only restrictions were that they had to follow on from the last scenario.
The rules were like any other game....are you taking the mickey?
They handled setbacks and bad luck, or even GM's bad judgement by.....(drum roll please)...wait for it.......wait for it.....................................
BY PLAYING THE GAME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:rolleyes:

We used to do this for Dreamwalker and it worked well.  It was really easy since you were playing the same characters night after night, but going into different dream worlds, so it didn't have long-term effects on my campaign (which involved more than just going into dream worlds).  It was a good changeup and it was interesting to see what other people could come up with.  I could see it working with other cross-genre/dimensional games as well like maybe a Sliders-type games.  I've never tried it in a "traditional" one-setting world, but I don't think it would work as well.  

Pete

I did this for the last few years of my Robotech game.  Another GM and I would trade off running the game.  That way, I got to play regularly.  It also had the benefit of shaking up story arcs and making things extremely dynamic.

I wouldn't recommend it for everyone, though.

I did that in an old 2e game (with the player's options books).

It was pretty cool.  I ran Under Illefarn for the guys, and they would run scenarios they came up with.  I was the "main" DM, though.

I remember the time I used a limited wish to save a loser henchman (we rolled 3d6 straight-up for the henchmen) of another PC from this crazy pit trap thing.  (There was a beam you had to go across and dodge these bladed pendulums, and we were making Dex checks; my twinky elf had 22 Dex or something, and I kept rolling 20s.  Awesome.)  Anyways, so the henchman fell into the pit and was bleeding out, and I couldn't think of any other way to save him except to use the limited wish.

Then I found out that he had Spider Climb memorized and could have just walked around the whole thing!  That was cool.

There was this other time the DM made his PC into an NPC who had been charmed by an evil wizard, and we had to save him; I cast Invisibility on him and hid him under a bed in a room with Hold Portal on it.  Then the theif took his gauntlets of ogre power and we climbed out the window to kick major ass.

And when I was DMing, I totally messed up this one fight with a Stone Golem.  The guys were 3rd or 4th level, and they only had one weapon that could hurt it (a +2 Sword of Speed, or quickness, or whatever it was called), and they had to walk through a room full of poison gas to get to it.  But after a round or two where they all fell pretty much dead from the poison, I realized that they had actually cancelled out the poison earlier in the adventure!

We rewound, got rid of the poison, and it was an awesome combat - the stupid golem just kept crushing whoever was in front of it, and would only attack the guy cutting its back up when no one else was near.  I think the sword of speed changed hands three times, and the last guy killed it with a backstab when he was in the single-digit hit points.

*

Hmm.  That probably wasn't what you were looking for, but it was fun to remember.  It was a cool campaign.

I recall that we were all pretty hard-core in this game - no fudging die rolls.  It didn't really matter because if your guy died then you'd just DM the next game.  We also had a rule that your PC couldn't do anything while you were the DM.

edit: Oh, more relevant stuff:

I was the one who suggested the "round-robin" idea.  And I was the one who set the campaign in the Forgotten Realms (mostly 1e stuff).  I was also the first to DM, so I DMed character creation - I made the rulings during that part of the campaign.  I don't think my PC broke any rules, but I think he was the most twinked-out.  Maybe if I wasn't the DM I would have rolled my eyes at that.

I also suggested that we use some of the 1e DMG stuff, like henchmen and a few other things... can't remember what it was.  So even though each scenario might be DMed by different people, I was really the campaign DM.