Letting a player GM an adventure or two.

[Bigkrieg]

Hey everyone
I wanted to see if I could get a few people’s opinion on letting a player run an adventure?

One player has been playing Starwars off and on with me for about 10 years or more now. He does not know the rules as well as I do, but I would be able to help him along. I also frequently bounce ideas off him and he offers good feedback on our adventures and ways to improve them. I believe he would do a good job. I am going to remain the permanent GM but this would allow him to GM some which he is excited about. I am also thinking it might be good opportunities to have the Pcs develop a bond with one of my NPCs whom I would be playing.

The players were former slaves who escaped a slave colony by stealing the slavers ship, which is a non modified 344 guardian cruiser. They are wanting to pirates. The adventure my friend is wanting to GM involves their first attempt at pirating another vessel.

Again, I am just curious about other people's experiences with doing this or if anyone might see a potential problem. Any input would be helpful.

[Guardian_A]

About half of the people I have gamed with over the years have GMd at least once with our group. Its always been a good experience for me and the group as a whole. I always consider it a good chance to take a break from GMing and actually play a character for a change.

Until recently, we had two GMs with out group, and we each GMd every other week (Each of us had a story that was unrelated to the other). It gave both of us more time to write our stories, and it gave each of us a chance to wind down and just play a character. Everyone in the group really liked the arrangement.

If you want to give it a try, I say go for it!

[DougRed4]

My gaming group consists of about 8-9 people, and we generally all take turns GMing. Usually each campaign has one GM in charge (usually me), so that person functions as a sort of Editor-in-Chief for the other GMs to run things by.

I think you should do it, but have also found it best to coordinate with the GM a bit, if they're running a story in a campaign that you are the main GM for. He/she doesn't have to spoil the plot or give you details, but it might be helpful to find out if they plan on anything major happening. That way they can run things by you and you can preemptively veto anything way out of whack (like after he tells you "I plan on having a Death Star show up and blow up Tatooine!").

In games like this, I think another thing to consider is to ask up front how much of the canon stuff they're going to interact with. One friend who has occasionally GMd for our group tended to often have our PC running into the "main characters" more than we usually did. So in Lord of the Rings we were interacting with rarely seen people like Galadriel, and in Star Wars we met Luke, Han, Leia, etc. This isn't a bad thing, necessarily, but it might be one you want a heads-up on.

You might even have more fun if you make an actual PC, even if they only end up being played that one time. I've done a lot of both (GMing and playing), and find it to be a lot more enjoyable (as a player) when I'm running a PC, rather than an NPC.

[garhkal]

Good on him wanting to step up..

A few concerns.. What portions will you help him on? Do you feel it might impact decisions cause of that?
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[Ankhanu]

In high school, the group I played with swapped GM duty every few weeks, maintaining a single large campaign. The GM's character would take a background role in the game, or be off on their own adventure without the others, and each GM would bring their own flavour and ideas to the overall progression of player experiences.

Sometimes what one person did as GM would mess up someone else's plan, but it made for a generally rich, unpredictable an organic story progression.

In short, if you trust him and if you can handle the loss of GM control and changes to your intended story (improvisation skill is a must!), go for it.
If not, maybe he can run another campaign?
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[Whill]

That's awesome. I've nurtured several players to become GMs. And in general I think it is very cool to have multiple players running Star Wars for the same group. When I was kid, my second RPG group played many different games and most of us took turns running for the other players within a single campaign, except that each GM's PC was written out of the story for the adventure ran by the PC's GM.

However, for me personally, I enjoy being GM much more than being a player. I love being the only one that knows the secrets, mysteries, surprises, plot twists, revelations and epic climaxes. I love blowing their minds with an interesting story and collaboratively bringing it to fruition. And I don't want to do any "extracurricular" gaming that might take time away from running my campaign.
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[DougRed4]