It has come to my attention that the concept of a DM playing a PC is not something that is often seen. When it is seen (or done for that matter), it is often regarded as being kind of off-putting.

I can understand why. You have the person who is essentially the driving force behind the story, also playing as a character who is a part of it, but not telling it.

So, should you do it? Why not!

I say go for it, and here is why. As we all know in the D&D world, sometimes a player has to remove themself from the campaign leaving a hole in the hearts of all involved (usually). This is the case that lead to this article. A player in the campaign had to leave due to work related reasons, and we as a group were left at a cross-roads.

Do we remove her character, and play with only three PCs, or do we keep her character “alive” and have someone in the party play as her as well as their character of choice?

The thing is, it’s very hard to play a character that someone else has made. I’ve done it before and many people have attempted to when playing a one-time situation. It’s difficult.

So, we decided to remove the character with the possibility that it can come back if the player decides to be part of the campaign again. Easy. Well, at least that part was. The next thing to do was make sure the characters involved were well-rounded enough to not be dead within the next couple of sessions.

So, what did I do as a DM? Well, I said “fuck it” (I literally said that out loud) and created a character that is best suited to cover the missing character’s role within the campaign.

My issue merely was trying to figure out how to handle being a Dungeon Master as well as a playable character. Could I effectively do it? Well, yeah I could… and I did and continue to do so.

The thing you have to understand is, even though you are the DM, you can still have fun with the characters by playing AS a character. It’s a role-playing game for goodness sake, it shouldn’t be that hard.

I can understand if people have an issue with it as a DM, but I haven’t found it difficult and that’s probably because the character makes sense (it wasn’t intended to exist in the first place) to the story and therefore is a good asset to the events that the players with endure.

So, should you dual role? I think if the situation calls for it, there isn’t any harm in doing so. The character I play alongside my DMing is merely a support character and doesn’t interact unless it’s necessary. You can almost think of it as a companion rather than a player. It has a personality, and it will come through when necessary, but it isn’t vital to the situation.