Day 22 - Substitute: A point for consideration: Substitute GM’s. Running a game is a great way to exercise your creativity, and let’s face it, if you don’t have a GM, you don’t have a game. But y’all. Running a game is hard. It’s stressful. It takes its toll, especially in long-running campaigns. Consider building in opportunities to let other players sit in the hot seat for a session or two. When you get to an arch break in a big campaign, it can be really refreshing to let one of the players run a side quest one-shot, or maybe a little mini-campaign. It gives the GM a chance to recharge, and even get to play a little bit to remind themselves what it’s like in the player’s chair. It can also let the players try out what it’s like to run a game if they’ve never tried it, without committing to running a full-length campaign. I’ve mentioned before that I ran a Dragonball Z homebrew game for years, starting in high school. Several times though, someone else would have a cool story idea, and rather than rolling up all-new characters, we just let them hop in the driver seat and take the wheel for a few weeks. That would give me time to work out what would happen next in the major storyline of the campaign. We handled it very much like the Garlic, Jr run back in DBZ that happened between the Freeza saga and the Android Saga. Now, if you’re not a DBZ fan, you probably have no idea what I’m talking about, but basically, there was about a six-episode stretch in the story where most of the main characters had an adventure that really didn’t affect much of the main storyline. It was a great way to keep the campaign fresh and is probably why it ran for as long as it did. So, players get the hot-tag, jump in and give your GM a night off.
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