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View Full Version : Idea I had, Everyone is the DM.



druid91
2010-08-07, 11:45 PM
Well what if instead of having one DM, every player made up a faction to go along with their character (their character does not have to lead the faction). Secret plans must be written out beforehand. And in the event that things devolve to the point where a DM would step in and make a ruling, then the group takes a vote.

Volomon
2010-08-07, 11:50 PM
Well what if instead of having one DM, every player made up a faction to go along with their character (their character does not have to lead the faction). Secret plans must be written out beforehand. And in the event that things devolve to the point where a DM would step in and make a ruling, then the group takes a vote.

I've heard of a DM and an assistant, but the notion of everyone DMing in 3.5 (?) doesn't sound like it would work. Who makes the story the character themselves? What would prevent one player from being kind to himself? What faction? The whole point of a DM is to tell a story and it's less about the rules the rules just support a story. I can't see anyone running a game with everyone being DM.

Now you can do a round robin DM style each player builds on the story of the last.

Horoar
2010-08-07, 11:50 PM
So who makes up the story and runs the encounters?

Kylarra
2010-08-07, 11:51 PM
That's not really everyone is a DM so much as no one is the DM.

Mongoose87
2010-08-07, 11:52 PM
DDM - Dungeon Direct Democracy.

Popertop
2010-08-07, 11:54 PM
Our group takes turns DMing our main, epic campaign(on the back burner right now while stuff gets written up)

And we each come up with campaigns on our own,
pitch them to the group, and whoever wants to DM it takes the idea and runs with it.

And with the faction idea...

I try and design character with prestige classes that have orders or something like that to give the DM something else to draw from or tie into the campaign if he wants to.
Helps make the world believable to me, too.

Zeta Kai
2010-08-07, 11:56 PM
All Indians, No Chiefs?

OR

All Chiefs, No Indians?

Morph Bark
2010-08-08, 05:42 AM
All Indians, No Chiefs?

OR

All Chiefs, No Indians?

Aren't all Chiefs of Indians also Indians? :smalltongue:

But yeah, this doesn't sound like it'd really work. There would still need to be someone making the encounters, unless the players would have their factions fight one another. But then it would sound more like a wholly different game.

Shinizak
2010-08-08, 01:45 PM
what you can do is give your players a story pool. Whenever you're explaining something, a player can spend this to make a change to the story.

Tyndmyr
2010-08-08, 01:57 PM
Try round robin dming. Its not without flaws, but compared to nobodt in charge at all, its awesome.

Autonomy
2010-08-08, 06:03 PM
Y'see when I saw the thread title I had a different take entirely. I assume everyone has seen Being John Malkovich, now imagine a campaign world along the same lines - every NPC is in fact looks like you, the DM.