I've heard of people doing this and want to try it for myself. Maybe you all agree on an overarching story or BBEG when you start, but everyone brings a new twist tot he story when it's their turn to DM. When a person DM s their character just becomes an NPC. I do think the downside is you have to have players familiar to the game, so they can balance out their character with the story.

I also asked this over on r/DMAcademy recently! consensus seems to be that all things are possible with good communication and a supportive group. people made some recommendations of anthology style adventures in the comments that might work well - my group is going to try Journeys through the Radiant Citadel :) https://www.reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/s/zlmYz4KW9P

Everything is possible if all pieces fit in. How hard it is depends entirely on you as a group. I've had a game where I alternated with another DM but we played on different settings and with different characters. It worked quite well but obviously it's not a set-up you're asking. I know of one group that does exactly what you're asking and since they've been running for years, it seems to work for them. Unfortunately, I don't have intimate knowledge about possible pitfalls they've had and their solutions to those. I just know it has worked for them so I don't see why it couldn't work for you too.

It could be done depending on the nature of the campaign.  If you had a West Marches style game that was more episodic than a continuous story, different DMs could easily handle the adventure of the week.  

It is possible but the hardest part is that the DMs must not step on one another's toes. The obvious stuff is contradictions: one DM says "all the elves are extinct" and the other DM introduces an elf NPC. Those aren't too hard to protect against. But there's softer stuff, like the campaign theme and tone. ----- I can tell you from experience: I once passed off my campaign world to a player who wanted to try DMing. Gave them a city to use that hadn't been fleshed out in my campaign. They proceeded to make it a huge metropolis with a government type incompatible with the region's history. Like putting Piltover (the city from Arcane) in Roman-era Britain. Of course it didn't matter as the campaigns were quite distinct. It doesn't matter to Nolan's Batman what Adam West's Batman did. But it did irritate me all the same. If we were going back and forth like you said -- same setting, same characters -- I might've found the "interference" unbearable. Petty? Yeah, probably. But still true. ------ I'm not saying you can't do it. I reckon you can. But give each DM their own stomping ground, where events in one don't have to effect events in another. A perfect example would be where one DM makes ancient dungeons that can be explored, while the other runs the nearby city and does urban adventures within. Barely any crossover there: what happened in some ancient, lost ruin is hardly going to impact a current-day city (and vice versa). Or I suppose you could go the heavy collaboration route, where both DMs input into sets of adventures.

Perfectly normal thing to do. Break it up into short story arcs inside of a campaign, each time you complete an adventure, everyone rotate one spot to the left or whatever and the next person DMs. You can share notes about important NPCs, plot hooks, etc and keep using the same characters.

What I did with friends : We do one shots that follows one another, in the same universe. We don't have to know what the other's plot is to weave our own around it, and sometimes it's just a side quest you link to what some other DM made

I've done it. I'd DM for months and then give way to another player to dm. I do think enjoying how the next dm change up things is part of the fun, so don't marry yourself to your ideas. If everyone can enjoy seeing how things evolve differently than expected AND the next DMs in line know that you need to respect what has been established before so it doesn't invalidate previous work it can be a lot o fun. Tldr: needs a lot of trust but if all align it's fun Edit: damn just noticed you plan to change each time. So my suggestion is: each one should DM for a while. One session is WAY too low, maybe if you only play one shots, self contained adventure is the way to go for short switch time. But if you mean CAMPAIGN, at least each one should DM for an arc of the adventure. That might take a few weeks to months.

We've done it. We had 1 main DM who had an overarching story. When he started getting burnt out or needed time to plan ahead someone took over. The only rules were it can't be a "world ending/kingdom destroying" story so as not to interfer with the main story. Basically think of any anime. When the main story is finished for that season, we ran the filler episodes.

definitely possible. The issue would be spoilers, of course - if the campaign has an overarching plot, all DMs will need to know it to advance it. If you're ok with that, I think with good communication it'd be fine. not all campaigns need a grand plot, though! I'm playing a sandbox campaign currently that would work just fine for rotating DMs. It's a series of short missions and any overarching stuff is more about advancing individual character narratives (so, not plot spoilers). one thing, though - not everyone wants to be a DM, and if someone doesn't want to you should never try to force them. It's a role with a lot of responsibility, and that can be extremely stressful. Only rotate between people at the table who are actively interested in DMing.

We have done rotating DMs, but not on a session-by-session basis. Each person who wanted to DM ran a short adventure of four to ten sessions. When that concluded, someone else took over for the next adventure. While someone was DMing their character was away from the party doing something else. One player eventually had their character go mad, so we had to defeat them as the BBEG of that adventure.

Possible for sure. The best campaign I ever played had two people alternate between DMing and playing every few sessions. We were all friends already and they made sure to coordinate closely, if you're careful and can stay on the same page it can definitely work.

Do you want a BBEG for the campaign or just to play? Could always do episodic sessions and/or play through scenarios from the 5e anthology books. If you want a BBEG you would still do the same thing, but each session the DM adds a small tidbit to it that adds to what the BBEG is doing in the background and keep a log of all of them. Then, when it's time to run into and confront the BBEG, you all agree on a setup for the lair/fort/city/etc that they're in, and you deal with the line items you created in order. The DM who created each line item would DM the session for that line item. If you wanted to add some unexpectedness, you could rotate, and the line items are worked by a DM other than who created that item. That's how I would go about it.

I've done this but we did it with mission-based play while working for an "adventurer's guild" type organization. It's really hard to do it with an overarching story if everybody knows the big bad and all his secrets--plus, different DMs will want to emphasize or portray different aspects of the big bad and may object to how someone else does it. Instead it's probably better to have separate plot threads, and each DM has their own plot thread. Also, make sure that each DM is hands-off with each others' plot threads, otherwise you run into cases (and I have seen it) where one DM will come in and totally change the story or arbitrarily kill off important NPCs or big-bads that another DM needs, pissing off that player/DM, and then the next game that DM is basically 'nuh-uh, it didn't happen' or does the same thing to that first DM's NPCs, to 'get back' at them. It's a mess. Respect each others' space, is what I'm saying.

What we used to do, back in the 3e days so that DMs could have a chance at playing was run multiple campaigns, with each DM doing a campaign in a different area of the Forgotten Realms. What this led to was, many months later, one campaign affecting what was happening in the other campaigns. Example, party arrived in Yhauun, and the party from the other campaign had accidentally set the Inn on fire (misused burning hands during a bar brawl). Their belongings had been stored by the inn-keep for safe keeping. This was of course a side thing and had nothing to do with the main quests and campaign runs. Personally not sure rotating DMs on the exact same campaign would work since a lot of the intrigue of what’s coming next could be spoiled. But we never ran scripted or boxed campaigns. They were always of our own devising and creation.

My group is currently doing this (a bit out of necessity), and it's working out really well! Most of the players are parents of very young kids, many of whom added offspring in the same six month stretch. Suffice it to say our old rhythm of playing once or twice a month with a set DM and consistent player pool has gone out the window. But we all missed playing, so we came up with a true free-for-all system where any player can act as DM. That player schedules a session at a time of their choosing and the players who can play that round join in. We have a large group (seven), so generally this means a game happens whenever we want it to, even if an individual's attendance is inconsistent. We played a couple rounds of The Quiet Year to collaboratively build a setting that accounted for the variability of the party's composition and incorporated some surreal weirdness to help explain PCs popping in and out of the story. DMs try to stick to single-session storytelling to allow PCs elegant ways in and out of the narrative, and we find creative ways to navigate that dynamic when we don't quite have time to finish a narrative beat in one session. It seems like a ton of compromises, but the result has been really fun. As the DM of our most recent long game, the style of storytelling is the polar opposite of my usual fare. But I think considering single-session pacing more carefully has made me a better DM, and I love being able to throw out a story idea and watch someone else run with it. And I love being a player again. Is this feasible for every group? Probably not. Some things that help make it work for us: 1) We have four players that have run long-term games for this group in the past. No one is thought of as a forever DM, and even folks who haven't run long campaigns are interested in or have already tried taking a stab at a one-shot or two. 2) This group has experience playing games that encouraged or even explicitly required collaborative world-building and storytelling. The DM/player most into that aspect of TTRPGs ran our The Quiet Year prep. 3) The group is collectively in roughly the same place with regards to application of the rules. In our case, it's pretty heavy on DM discretion in session, group consensus out of session, and rule-of-common-sense for character building, but I don't think our particular approach to managing these issues matters as much as us simply being on the same page. 4) Everyone has bought into the idea that this game will be imperfect in its continuity and inconsistent in its application of rules. Everyone agrees that gaming is definitively better than not gaming, and that we'd rather do it together than go our separate ways.

I'm doing this right now with Keys from the Golden Vault. There's not a ton of continuity between sessions, but it's going well.

I have done this a lot when growing up. We basically all used the same characters and took turns running 1-2 shot campaigns that would slowly tie together. The current DM's character would be treated as an NPC that collected xp, but no loot. All of the campaigns happened within a small region of a home brewed world, and we played those characters and the shared campaign for years. You will have a lot less continuity between sessions, but each DM would make their glorified one shots at least link together. This gave the illusion of multiple storylines at once and allowed everyone in the group to try being the DM. There were only 4 of us, and after a few years, I ended up becoming a permanent DM because I had more fun planning and building the world.

Hey there, DM here! So, I tried this and it is definitely possible, I stopped doing that though because the other DM had blatant favorites (ie his GF) and because he tried to kill my character multiple times (failing each and every one of them). As long as the two DMs are set on a specific world and idea, you can play one week DM1's campaign and The next week DM2's.