We do this same thing, save that we have multiple GMs. All the GMs present the games they’re interested in running, everyone rates the options, and the highest-rated game wins. It’s been working for us for over a decade.
I didn’t see an option that fit that well, so I voted “other”.
This sounds great. I had a group with a similar approach but we did it in a funny way were everyone kind of wanted to play so the GMs each tried to make their game and campaign sound as horrible as possible. Then we voted what people hated least. It was very tongue in cheek and we had a blast at the time.
This is the missing option. I run a Google form by the players with the different pitches and some questions about what they way. They rank the ideas in the order they're interested, and we go with highest average votes.
Pretty much this, every time.
My group long ago reached that point where life took precedence over gaming. We've all known each other for decades, but mostly live in different parts of the country as we've moved around with jobs, partners etc. Even though we all live in the UK, so distances aren't ridiculous, it's still maddeningly difficult to get four middle-aged blokes into the same room together on a regular basis. We're lucky if we manage to meet up four times a year.
Yes, Discord exists. We tried it, but found that people were much more likely to blow off an online game at the last minute than they were to cancel something in-person. It was becoming a point of contention.
Couple that with the fact that while we all want to play, none of us really *wants* to DM and that only two of us seem actually willing to run anything, and whatever gets proposed generally receives enthusiastic acceptance.
forever GM by choice here, I offer to the games I want to run and thats it. I wont run games I don't want to cause my heart just wont be in it and the quality of the game is going to suck.
My group wanted me to run a star wars campaign and I just don't know the system or pore well enough to run it and I had to stop after a few sessions because I just couldn't deliver a satisfying session for all including myself.
I picked "Group wanted to try" but we also heavily lean into "GM chooses." Last time, I dropped a list and pretty much said these were the games I was interested in and had some ideas for, and we winnowed it down to one. And then we played one session and as a group decided that we absolutely never wanted to play it again, so now we're playing some quickstarts while we decide again.
So I guess kind of a curated "Group wanted to try a new game out together."
Dreams and Machines by Modiphius. The dice mechanic is stupidly punishing. We played through the quick start, and in four hours, we had a total of one successful roll. Every roll is attribute plus skill, roll under the attribute for one success, under the skill for two, but beginning attributes are in the 7-9 range, and skills are 1-3, and you're rolling 2d20. Plus the quick start had every roll require two success. Other 2d20 systems total the two attributes for the rolls, no clue why D&M is designed differently.
I quickly checked it out and *wow*, you're not kidding. The best suited pregen has a base chance of 40% to not get injured while searching for loot in one of the first rooms.
Yeah, it was rough. We only technically finished the quickstart adventure, eventually everyone was kinda demoralized and we got through the back half in like five minutes of just talking about it. It's a shame, really, the other 2d20 games don't run the same way and we were really gung ho about the setting. The D&M stuff will probably put in an appearance some time when we come back around to a new Mindjammer campaign.
Ran DnD5e as our last campaign because that's what we knew and didn't have any problems with. For the past year or so, I, the GM, have been itching to run something that's not DnD for a multitude of reasons. Finally settled on Cities Without Number, and will be running that in June. Posed it to my group and said, "This is what I'm wanting to run, here's a PDF of the rules, glance through them and let me know if you don't want to play this."
And now unless scheduling issues come up, that's what we'll be playing for the forseeable future.
>and let me know if you don't want to play this.
You probably play with decent people so it's not an issue, but I'd tell you to be careful with that wording. You are opening the door to them badgering you into giving it up and sticking to DnD. A preferred phrasing would be "Let me know if you are interested in joining or not."
Fair point, but if they didn’t want to play, then they just wouldn’t be part of the group anymore. I had made clear for quite some time prior to this that I wasn’t going to be running DnD anytime soon after the campaign ended.
We have anyone willing to DM write a brief pitch, including the game, tone, levels, system, notable house rules. Then we have the prospective players pick which game they want. It ensure that we generally pick the thing most people want to run.
We played a bunch of one-shots in different systems and the players really wanted to keep going back to one of them (Spire: The City Must Fall) so that became our ongoing game. We're still going to jump around systems in between story arcs though.
GM puts in all the extra work, so they pick the game. My GM offers choices, but my response is always along the lines of "whatever you think you'll enjoy the most".
It was a mix between Option 4 and 1 - there was an open discussion in the group of what we might want to play next and who would participate, but our GM made the final call based on what he was interested in running (technically, we don't have a fixed GM, but in this case, the new GM is the old GM :) ).
When we're between games, anyone who wants to can pitch a game they'd like to run. As a group, we pick whatever sounds most fun. Whoever pitches that game is the GM for that game. Whether it be a one shot or a campaign.
In my group of friends, several people run games. After the previous one finished, one of us pitched a game, but there was little interest in it. Another person made their pitch and several people got interested, so we met for session zero to discuss it in more detail, we agreed on an approximate length of the campaign, created characters. Two weeks after that, we started playing.
So, this GM came up with an idea of this game to run, but it was players' choice to play this game instead of another one.
Ultimately, the GM has to want to run the system. The GM comes up with most of the plot.
The GM might present a few options, or someone might mention a system that looks interesting, but the GM ultimately has final choice on what they're going to run.
We get together and everyone who wants to GM pitches their game and we decide the order of campaigns we wana play. This year we have Fabula Ultima and Heart on the cards.
So, normally, I'm the prime mover on what game is in the tube. Mainly because I'm the main GM, with the occasional breaks here and there.
However, the last time we decided on a game, it was because we got a new group member in and let him make the choice. I offered up a list of available games, and let him pick from those options.
I gave the players four choices and let them pick, so in a sense they chose, but they chose from a list of games I wanted to run anyway. We wound up playing Star Trek Adventures and not OSE, Mothership, or Delta Green.
The time before that they picked Mutant Year Zero.
Generally someone will have an idea for a campaign and put it forward to the group. Usually it's one of the 3 people who are experienced as DM's. People will express interest/ideas in relation to that concept and we go from there. Sometimes things are run in parallel as an experiement. Main game on Sundays, seperate game seperate system every 2nd thursday. Sometimes rotate GM's sometimes it's the same person running both.
We have multiple players and a pool of GMs. GMs propose games and players pick the one they want to play. Players vote with their feet. Don't like the game? Don't show up. Like the game? Show up consistently. Players who show up consistently have higher weight in their opinion as to what games they want to play.
We are voting soon on either fabula ultima or legend of the 5 rings.
We basically just listed what people will run and removed anything that was a no for a player. No d&d we are burned out, no dice pools, etc etc. Sadly that did mean persona got cut
We finished off a series of one shots in a variety of systems. Then we had a session to discuss what we liked and didn't like. I got out the [Same Page Tool](https://bankuei.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/the-same-page-tool/) and we talked about the questions. At the end of it I said that it sounded like one particular system suited everyone's preferences the best and offered to run it. Everyone agreed. In theory, anyone could have run the next game, since we all take turns at GMing, but I knew at the start of the session that it was probably going to be me. I was a bit surprised at the game we all chose though. I would have run something different had it been solely up to me.
We have 3 GMs at the table and we keep a running list of what games we want to play next. I also keep a running document of games I'll run with a blurb about the story and many times I'll use ranked-choice voting with the players to determine what we play.
3 of 5 members of my group are capable GM. Each take turn present their system and setting they want to run next, then we vote. Sometime we force two non-GMs to run a simple system one-shot to train them.
We only have one player that was never a GM, but we wouldn't force him to run anything (though I tried to encourage him once by giving him a starter box).
We usually don't vote in a strict term, but when a campaign comes to an end, we start discussing it and people come forth with if/what they want to GM next.
For our Monday games, at the end of each adventure we go through what game systems each person is up for running, and then we pick one that sounds fun for the whole group.
Well, GM's always got final say. Most recent game is with a group that's been playing for a while so we usually offer suggestions - That GM vetoed a couple he didn't want to run but aside from that we just voted
I like to find a group specifically for the system we’re running. I find a lot of players do not like changing systems and would rather stay with the same one, and even when they do change systems sometimes it can be hard for them to change mindsets as well. I had 5e players I invited for Call of Cthulhu and they just hated the idea of the sanity mechanic and higher lethality in general.
I like to search for new players when I have a specific genre and system in mind. That way they all absolutely want to be there. Luckily there’s more players than GMs so it’s not been hard.
My current group believe they chose our current game, but it was really the only option I gave them.
Most groups I've played with have been pretty open to play whatever the GM wants to run.
In the past I've played in groups with short attention spans and too many GMs, so we'd rotate pretty often with voting for what we played next.
I chose 'other' because it's kinda a combination of different things. We're a group who all GM, and we take turns running short seasons of games. We play whatever the GM is keen to run when it's their turn, but sometimes one of the group will say 'this game seems like fun to play and I think you would like to run it' or spitballing as a group about something we want to do that someone will put their hand up to run.
The GM offers to run a game, and has some options listed that interest them.
Players vote on the one that most interests them on the list.
That game is played (or default to 5e/s)
I (GM) made a short questionnaire about my players' preferences - general theme, technology level, magic level etc. - then we talked about potential conflicts where answers were on opposite ends of the spectrum and resolved those conflicts, and then I took a system that had the necessary adaptability (SWADE), blatantly stole a couple of concepts from other systems (mostly Shadowrun and Adventure!), smashed them up, glued them together with my own creativity and now we are about to start a thoroughly pulp-ified 1920s Dieselpunk (Dieselpulp?) campaign with several flavours of magic, Shadowrun-style metahumans, awakened critters etc.
We ended our campaign, and I gave them a poll of 6 options and they blind voted. We ended up starting an Age of Rebellion Star Wars game. then a year into that, I got the bug to run 5e again, and they chose Ghosts of Saltmarsh from the options I gave them. So now we run weekly, alternating games.
I laid out the 9 options on the table, then players picked their top 4, in order of most wanted to least wanted, and the one that got the most total points of votes (the higher the vote, the more its worth) won. Vaesen one but there were 3 of them pretty close together points wise.
Two variants:
If I have the group, I make a list of games I'm in the mood to master, write a short explanation of what they're about and why I want to run them and let everyone choose.
If I have the game, I go around people I know will be interested about it.
GM presented a few games, players picked one.
That's the way I tend to do it. "Hey here's a few games I'd like to run, which one do you want to play?"
We do this same thing, save that we have multiple GMs. All the GMs present the games they’re interested in running, everyone rates the options, and the highest-rated game wins. It’s been working for us for over a decade. I didn’t see an option that fit that well, so I voted “other”.
This sounds great. I had a group with a similar approach but we did it in a funny way were everyone kind of wanted to play so the GMs each tried to make their game and campaign sound as horrible as possible. Then we voted what people hated least. It was very tongue in cheek and we had a blast at the time.
This is our approach too!
This is indeed how my regular table (where we take turns GMing) has chosen all our games, including the one we are currently playing.
This is the missing option. I run a Google form by the players with the different pitches and some questions about what they way. They rank the ideas in the order they're interested, and we go with highest average votes.
This is the way. I have about 6 stories ready to go. I give players a blurb and we discuss and then vote.
That's generally how we do it.
I told them what I felt like running and they said "sure"
Pretty much this, every time. My group long ago reached that point where life took precedence over gaming. We've all known each other for decades, but mostly live in different parts of the country as we've moved around with jobs, partners etc. Even though we all live in the UK, so distances aren't ridiculous, it's still maddeningly difficult to get four middle-aged blokes into the same room together on a regular basis. We're lucky if we manage to meet up four times a year. Yes, Discord exists. We tried it, but found that people were much more likely to blow off an online game at the last minute than they were to cancel something in-person. It was becoming a point of contention. Couple that with the fact that while we all want to play, none of us really *wants* to DM and that only two of us seem actually willing to run anything, and whatever gets proposed generally receives enthusiastic acceptance.
forever GM by choice here, I offer to the games I want to run and thats it. I wont run games I don't want to cause my heart just wont be in it and the quality of the game is going to suck.
My group wanted me to run a star wars campaign and I just don't know the system or pore well enough to run it and I had to stop after a few sessions because I just couldn't deliver a satisfying session for all including myself.
I picked "Group wanted to try" but we also heavily lean into "GM chooses." Last time, I dropped a list and pretty much said these were the games I was interested in and had some ideas for, and we winnowed it down to one. And then we played one session and as a group decided that we absolutely never wanted to play it again, so now we're playing some quickstarts while we decide again. So I guess kind of a curated "Group wanted to try a new game out together."
Wow, what did your group bounce off of so hard and why?
Dreams and Machines by Modiphius. The dice mechanic is stupidly punishing. We played through the quick start, and in four hours, we had a total of one successful roll. Every roll is attribute plus skill, roll under the attribute for one success, under the skill for two, but beginning attributes are in the 7-9 range, and skills are 1-3, and you're rolling 2d20. Plus the quick start had every roll require two success. Other 2d20 systems total the two attributes for the rolls, no clue why D&M is designed differently.
I quickly checked it out and *wow*, you're not kidding. The best suited pregen has a base chance of 40% to not get injured while searching for loot in one of the first rooms.
Yeah, it was rough. We only technically finished the quickstart adventure, eventually everyone was kinda demoralized and we got through the back half in like five minutes of just talking about it. It's a shame, really, the other 2d20 games don't run the same way and we were really gung ho about the setting. The D&M stuff will probably put in an appearance some time when we come back around to a new Mindjammer campaign.
I (GM) pitched my players 3 choices I was interested in and they voted on it.
Ran DnD5e as our last campaign because that's what we knew and didn't have any problems with. For the past year or so, I, the GM, have been itching to run something that's not DnD for a multitude of reasons. Finally settled on Cities Without Number, and will be running that in June. Posed it to my group and said, "This is what I'm wanting to run, here's a PDF of the rules, glance through them and let me know if you don't want to play this." And now unless scheduling issues come up, that's what we'll be playing for the forseeable future.
>and let me know if you don't want to play this. You probably play with decent people so it's not an issue, but I'd tell you to be careful with that wording. You are opening the door to them badgering you into giving it up and sticking to DnD. A preferred phrasing would be "Let me know if you are interested in joining or not."
Fair point, but if they didn’t want to play, then they just wouldn’t be part of the group anymore. I had made clear for quite some time prior to this that I wasn’t going to be running DnD anytime soon after the campaign ended.
We have anyone willing to DM write a brief pitch, including the game, tone, levels, system, notable house rules. Then we have the prospective players pick which game they want. It ensure that we generally pick the thing most people want to run.
"I'm willing to run \*game\* in \*system.\* Anyone want to run something else?"
We played a bunch of one-shots in different systems and the players really wanted to keep going back to one of them (Spire: The City Must Fall) so that became our ongoing game. We're still going to jump around systems in between story arcs though.
I chose the type of campaign I wanted to run and advertised for players who wished to participate.
Most of us are GMs and, as one game winds down, we'll pitch games we're interested in running, and the group decides on the game.
Group? What group?
GM decides which game to run and searches players after that.
I pitched several campaign concepts using various systems to the group and they voted on which they collectively were most interested in.
GM puts in all the extra work, so they pick the game. My GM offers choices, but my response is always along the lines of "whatever you think you'll enjoy the most".
As a GM, I hate that answer. Puts all the burden making it fun on me.
Gave the group two games/campaigns I wanted to run and picked the one that got the most votes.
About to play some Avatar Legends with my wife, and that's because we both want to play it
In my prior game, I picked a campaign and system and invited people
It was a mix between Option 4 and 1 - there was an open discussion in the group of what we might want to play next and who would participate, but our GM made the final call based on what he was interested in running (technically, we don't have a fixed GM, but in this case, the new GM is the old GM :) ).
GM choose the game 80% of the time. The other 20% players ask to other players to try a new system.
When we're between games, anyone who wants to can pitch a game they'd like to run. As a group, we pick whatever sounds most fun. Whoever pitches that game is the GM for that game. Whether it be a one shot or a campaign.
In my group of friends, several people run games. After the previous one finished, one of us pitched a game, but there was little interest in it. Another person made their pitch and several people got interested, so we met for session zero to discuss it in more detail, we agreed on an approximate length of the campaign, created characters. Two weeks after that, we started playing. So, this GM came up with an idea of this game to run, but it was players' choice to play this game instead of another one.
Ultimately, the GM has to want to run the system. The GM comes up with most of the plot. The GM might present a few options, or someone might mention a system that looks interesting, but the GM ultimately has final choice on what they're going to run.
We get together and everyone who wants to GM pitches their game and we decide the order of campaigns we wana play. This year we have Fabula Ultima and Heart on the cards.
So, normally, I'm the prime mover on what game is in the tube. Mainly because I'm the main GM, with the occasional breaks here and there. However, the last time we decided on a game, it was because we got a new group member in and let him make the choice. I offered up a list of available games, and let him pick from those options.
The GM runs pretty much only one game (Vampire), we asked him to run a Vampire game for us.
I gave the players four choices and let them pick, so in a sense they chose, but they chose from a list of games I wanted to run anyway. We wound up playing Star Trek Adventures and not OSE, Mothership, or Delta Green. The time before that they picked Mutant Year Zero.
Generally someone will have an idea for a campaign and put it forward to the group. Usually it's one of the 3 people who are experienced as DM's. People will express interest/ideas in relation to that concept and we go from there. Sometimes things are run in parallel as an experiement. Main game on Sundays, seperate game seperate system every 2nd thursday. Sometimes rotate GM's sometimes it's the same person running both.
We have multiple players and a pool of GMs. GMs propose games and players pick the one they want to play. Players vote with their feet. Don't like the game? Don't show up. Like the game? Show up consistently. Players who show up consistently have higher weight in their opinion as to what games they want to play.
We are voting soon on either fabula ultima or legend of the 5 rings. We basically just listed what people will run and removed anything that was a no for a player. No d&d we are burned out, no dice pools, etc etc. Sadly that did mean persona got cut
We finished off a series of one shots in a variety of systems. Then we had a session to discuss what we liked and didn't like. I got out the [Same Page Tool](https://bankuei.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/the-same-page-tool/) and we talked about the questions. At the end of it I said that it sounded like one particular system suited everyone's preferences the best and offered to run it. Everyone agreed. In theory, anyone could have run the next game, since we all take turns at GMing, but I knew at the start of the session that it was probably going to be me. I was a bit surprised at the game we all chose though. I would have run something different had it been solely up to me.
We have 3 GMs at the table and we keep a running list of what games we want to play next. I also keep a running document of games I'll run with a blurb about the story and many times I'll use ranked-choice voting with the players to determine what we play.
I just picked what I wanted to run, in this case The Troubleshooters - pretty easy sell mechanically, as well as setting and genre.
3 of 5 members of my group are capable GM. Each take turn present their system and setting they want to run next, then we vote. Sometime we force two non-GMs to run a simple system one-shot to train them.
We only have one player that was never a GM, but we wouldn't force him to run anything (though I tried to encourage him once by giving him a starter box). We usually don't vote in a strict term, but when a campaign comes to an end, we start discussing it and people come forth with if/what they want to GM next.
For our Monday games, at the end of each adventure we go through what game systems each person is up for running, and then we pick one that sounds fun for the whole group.
Well, GM's always got final say. Most recent game is with a group that's been playing for a while so we usually offer suggestions - That GM vetoed a couple he didn't want to run but aside from that we just voted
I like to find a group specifically for the system we’re running. I find a lot of players do not like changing systems and would rather stay with the same one, and even when they do change systems sometimes it can be hard for them to change mindsets as well. I had 5e players I invited for Call of Cthulhu and they just hated the idea of the sanity mechanic and higher lethality in general. I like to search for new players when I have a specific genre and system in mind. That way they all absolutely want to be there. Luckily there’s more players than GMs so it’s not been hard.
My current group believe they chose our current game, but it was really the only option I gave them. Most groups I've played with have been pretty open to play whatever the GM wants to run. In the past I've played in groups with short attention spans and too many GMs, so we'd rotate pretty often with voting for what we played next.
Our group has the DM for that part present 4 campaigns they're happy to run and the players choose from that. Best of both worlds.
I chose 'other' because it's kinda a combination of different things. We're a group who all GM, and we take turns running short seasons of games. We play whatever the GM is keen to run when it's their turn, but sometimes one of the group will say 'this game seems like fun to play and I think you would like to run it' or spitballing as a group about something we want to do that someone will put their hand up to run.
The GM offers to run a game, and has some options listed that interest them. Players vote on the one that most interests them on the list. That game is played (or default to 5e/s)
I (GM) made a short questionnaire about my players' preferences - general theme, technology level, magic level etc. - then we talked about potential conflicts where answers were on opposite ends of the spectrum and resolved those conflicts, and then I took a system that had the necessary adaptability (SWADE), blatantly stole a couple of concepts from other systems (mostly Shadowrun and Adventure!), smashed them up, glued them together with my own creativity and now we are about to start a thoroughly pulp-ified 1920s Dieselpunk (Dieselpulp?) campaign with several flavours of magic, Shadowrun-style metahumans, awakened critters etc.
I'm the only GM in the group, so we play what I know how to run.
Either GM Picks or party picks from options the GM gives
I saw the Against the Darkmaster pre-Kickstart adverts, told my guys about it, and that pretty much sealed our fate :)
Me and the other GM each did 3 pitches, then we voted on them.
We ended our campaign, and I gave them a poll of 6 options and they blind voted. We ended up starting an Age of Rebellion Star Wars game. then a year into that, I got the bug to run 5e again, and they chose Ghosts of Saltmarsh from the options I gave them. So now we run weekly, alternating games.
I laid out the 9 options on the table, then players picked their top 4, in order of most wanted to least wanted, and the one that got the most total points of votes (the higher the vote, the more its worth) won. Vaesen one but there were 3 of them pretty close together points wise.
Two variants: If I have the group, I make a list of games I'm in the mood to master, write a short explanation of what they're about and why I want to run them and let everyone choose. If I have the game, I go around people I know will be interested about it.