Can the DM also be a player? | D&D Discussion

In this virtual roundtable discussion we explore the question "Can a DM also be a player?" We talk about the reasons why a DM may want to play as a player in their own campaign, and some personal pitfalls and things we've learned on the subject.

[@chiepah2]

There are good ways and bad ways to do this, my DM does this but her character is a "I don't care, if we are doing what I want to do we are going to be drinking at the bar." type character. It requires a lot of integrity and ability to keep things separate and you have to have a lot of experience to manage this well.

[@byronstory3291]

I will say my partner and I have been playing a One on One dnd game with them DMing and also playing a DM PC the whole time. - and its honestly kinda worked.
The characters have a very good cop bad cop type relationship- which in turn kinda... motivates the direction of the story in a lot of interesting ways it otherwise wouldn't have if that other PC weren't there.
I will say alot of it is probably thanks to them having good discretion and hesitancy not to steal too much spotlight. - this is also kinda impossible because the core goal of the campaign directly relates to my PC's revenge plot against some npcs that fucked them over in session zero.