With all of the responsibilities/hardships of being adults, it seems that it's hard to get 6 of the same people together once a week to play a game. In something like an adventure path, this can result in a long string of outages, which kills momentum. A related concern is players feeling more disconnected from the campaign, because of the chunk of story they missed when someone else had to run their character.
As a solution I considered Society play. Its advantages are:
1) Anyone can DM from game to game.
2) The modules scale fairly well from 3 to 5 players.
3) The modularity of the games means that a player absence wouldn't be an issue.
But, then Society play has issues.
1) Rules legalities aren't fun for most.
2) Some players will level faster than others.
3) Bureaucracy.
So, what I want is something with all of the strengths and none of the weaknesses. My perfect solution would have:
1) Modularity.
2) Group Leveling, including those who are absent/DMing.
3) Simplicity of use.
4) Customizable rules inclusion. For instance, I'd prefer not to ban crafting.
5) Brevity. Short enough modules for a single session. Not a problem if we rip them from PFS.
I have some ideas for doing this, but if someone else has already done all of the work, please let me know. Any feedback will be helpful, and if no one else has a design of something like this, I plan to take it on as a side project and keep everyone updated in this thread.
You can simply create a campaign with adventures that work on a session by session basis. It could be like PFS where you're all working for the same company, that you answer to the same NPC, or perhaps everyone is on a ship that travels from location to location. Or maybe you have a megadungeon that remains consistent despite having a different party each time.
This is my first rough draft for how I envision the player side of things working. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fV25BhmADJaM0vI4lRZHK9v0562EZdrHYherJWa K830/pub For the GM side of things, I don't really see why the regular PFS modules wouldn't fit the bill nicely.
The thing I'm not sure of is how to "reward" the GM. Players in a game will be able to share the wealth they find. And those who miss a game can always play catch up using the table in my document. But the GM deserves more than just "catch up" in my opinion.
What if the GM's character gets a cut of the profit from each successful mission?
What if the GM's character gets a cut of the profit from each successful mission?
I'm worried that may create a conflict of interest. It would also be hard to calculate. I suppose the GM could duplicate one piece of treasure from the module to his own character but I'm not sure if that's either "too much" or "not enough".
Edit: I'm thinking of going with one item with the addendum that the item doesn't count towards the characters wealth.
Could just give them a set amount of gold. If you give them items from the spoils, then that WILL create a conflict of interest.
Could just give them a set amount of gold. If you give them items from the spoils, then that WILL create a conflict of interest.
I'm concerned about the extra math involved in that. At least I can't think of a low math way of handling it. I have considered giving a GM an additive percent bonus to their minimum wealth and maximum price. But I'm not very happy with this solution and can't decide on a percent to use. Maybe 5%.
You can run PFS scenarios, even though you're not playing PFS. They have a set amount of wealth that each PC gets.