So, you’ve decided to run a round-robin campaign. You’re tired of being the only GM, or of another GM hogging the head of the table, and you’re ready to tell a cooperative story with your friends. Where do you start? How do you handle the story? How do you maintain some mystique when everyone is crowded behind the screen with you? Here’s how to set up a round-robin campaign.
Pick the right people
This is the sort of situation that can lead to tremendous conflict if the wrong personalities are involved. Make sure to pick friends who can compromise. Select people who can swallow their pride. Select out people who have control issues, communication issues, or who tend to flake out on schedules and responsibilities. The last thing you want is to be elbow-deep in the guts of the campaign and find out that your fellow surgeon doesn’t work well with others and refuses to share the tools. Pick your fellows carefully.
Keep your group small. Three or four is perfect. Five is unwieldy, and six is right out. Too many people trying to tell the same story is going to tear it apart.
Agree on a setting and a metaplot
Everyone has to be on the same page with where the story is going to be set, and what the overall story needs to be. Make sure to discuss clearly, in no uncertain terms, the following: What system, what world, what era, what nation, what city, what culture, what subculture, and what organization. Be extremely clear on where the characters are and what their status is. For example, you may set a group of supernatural detectives into Renaissance Venice working for a witch-hunter branch of the Catholic Church. The group starts off as initiates and must prove their loyalty and devotion to the cause by doing grunt work. They may come from different socioeconomic classes, with one being a rich merchant’s son, one a street performer, one a pickpocket, and one a painter in the employ of the first character. Make sure to discuss how these social statuses will affect the campaign setting.
The metaplot should be something massive and flexible. Don’t confuse flexible with vague. You do not want a vague plot that the characters can’t sink their teeth into, or that the other GMs can’t get a grasp on. Pick a metaplot that can easily spawn different types of substories, so that each GM can write to their strengths. Good examples of metaplots are:
- A struggle against an oppressive government with the party as rebels
- A war against another nation with the party as special agents and soldiers
- A secret mission to hunt the supernatural and overcome it
- A desperate rush from one job to another in order to stay one step ahead of starvation
- An uphill battle to maintain social status within the city in order to protect yourself from rivals
- World hopping with the same characters
Build your characters together
With four GMs playing and running, the characters need to balance perfectly. Remember that you will only be playing beside any other character half the time, because 1/4 of the time you will be running and 1/4 of the time he or she will be running. This means that multiple social characters may be an excellent idea. In fact, an overlap of all skills is good.
Because you’re all playing characters and running, building inter-character relationships may be a bit tougher. Start out with all of the characters connected in some way. With four people, pair them up as siblings or friends. Set them all up in some sort of organization that ties them together and requires cooperation. Set it up so they have to work together, even if they don’t like each other. In fact, make it so that they will die if they don’t have each other to depend on. Make survival the biggest requirement here, with the ever-present danger of overwhelming death looming above them.
Finally, keep in mind that you cannot run a session that plays to your own character’s strength. If you’re the biggest titan of combat, you shouldn’t have combat be a huge focus for your sessions. If you are the major social character, don’t require multiple social rolls to get through the story. In fact, make a character with a focus that you would never want to run. Conversely, make a character that embodies your most common style of GMing, so that you have to write outside of your comfort zone.
Agree to run multiple subplots
Mystery and suspense are important to any story. In order to maintain this, you should agree on what each GM is going to run. One person can run major campaigns against the mysterious shadow creatures spilling forth from the cursed relic, another GM can focus on the party’s interactions with their ancient organization and the corruption that has taken root in it, the third GM can run monster-of-the-week style sessions, and the fourth can run sessions focusing on the social contacts of the party.
The perfect example to follow is from the X-Files television show. Various writers kept multiple subplots: Evil black ooze, corrupt black ops organizations within the FBI, random and unique monsters, and alien invasions. These subplots wove together to create one large metaplot about a small party of individuals battling the evil and the supernatural.
The point is: Keep your subplot secret, but share enough that the other GMs know what territories are yours. And speaking of territory…
Share the throne with your fellows
Remember that there is no head-GM at the table. One GM does not hold power over the campaign. You are not “allowing” the other GMs to participate in your campaign. Just what does this mean?
There will have to be compromises. How much experience do you hand out per session? How do you handle the economy? How much status will the party earn? These are questions that have to be answered together. It’s not always easy for a GM to compromise on their vision, but with practice, it is a skill that can be used to great effect. Swallow your pride and your perfect vision, and recognize that you’re here to tell a story together with your friends.
Consult often
How did the session go? What do you guys think of the flamboyant merchant NPC? How would you feel about me running a big masquerade ball next week? Is it cool if I cut us down to broke in order to facilitate the story? What if I blow up our ship and strand us on this planet for a few sessions?
Talk with your fellow GMs more often than just during the session. Maintain good contact between sessions via text, phone, email, Twitter, Facebook, or carrier pigeon. Get feedback on how your sessions went, and give solid and sensitive feedback to the other GMs to help them improve and to build their confidence.
Schedule appropriately
Set it up so the strongest GMs run first. This ensures that the most experienced GMs have time to create an army of NPCs with personality, and to flesh out the world. By the time the experienced GMs are done with their first sessions, the less experienced GMs will have plenty to work with. Suddenly, running a campaign is not so daunting because the heavy lifting is done.
Set up the expectation that a GM can skip one session in a row only. Skipping two sessions is right out. The last thing you want in this setup is resentment that one person isn’t carrying their weight or keeps skipping out on the check after enjoying the meal. Set up a solid expectation at the beginning so that there is no chance of a problem springing up later.
Make sure not to hold onto the spotlight for too long. Single sessions are appropriate. For longer stories, two sessions can be done once in a while. Make sure not to exceed two sessions, or to do multiple sessions too often. Don’t let this turn into one guy running his story with everyone else on the sidelines. Remember, you’re running episodes of a show, not the show itself with guest writers.
Have fun
Round-robin campaigns, done right, can be some of the most satisfying and enjoyable experiences a gamer can have. Get out there and get going on your own setup. And let us know in the comments below about your own experiences with this style. Or, if you’re too nervous to try it, tell us that too. Practice consulting with your fellow GMs.