We ran a very successful and fun (if short lived) campaign where me and another player went through so many player options we ended up fully making three different characters apeice but were unable to decide which one's we wanted to play.
Since some of our players were absent, and the long term goal of our characters was to establish a guild of adventurers, the DM decided to put the other members players on the backburner for now (normally we would just play them for them) and let us use all of our characters. We were asked to clear out an ancient keep hat had been commandeered by a necromancer. In return we were given the Keep so long as we were able to make it hospitable for a own within the next two years. So after a long time spent deciding how much money we had to spend on what and the bard and paladin going off to convince people to come, (not hard, on of our draws was a free house for a three year contract to live and work here)
Aftr we got our town and our adventuring guild set up we started going out on quests. But by now the other players were able to join us and they wanted multiple characters too. So now we had roughly 10 high lvl adventurers, and hoards of low level PC underlings, going out on quests for huge amounts of money. And for each quest we had to decide who left and who stayed behind to protect the town. So we had to assemble a team that we thought would be the best for the job.
We ended up with huge amounts of money but we spent most of it on the town. A lyre of building to aid constuction/reconstruction, golem guardians, a trap proctected vault for the towns coffers, building mansions to attract more nobility. ect. And it was all a huge blast but since it was so short, maybe two or three sessions, I was unable to tell if there would be any long term problems. Because if there isn't I want to push for something similar again soon.
Anyone else try this and have as much fun as we did?
I actually had this happen in a game, though it wasn't intentional. The characters were sent to the very northern reaches of the land they were in, to deliver money to an NPC's mother. (Yep, they were softies at heart). The town they get to is this little backwater that's having issues with some of its nonhuman members (nezumi and dwarves) and the human population. The characters negotiate a peace and decide to stick around. For whatever reason the place appealed to them - I guess fending off a duergar invasion helps that. :-D
Anyway, they decided to stay, and wherever they adventured after that, they were always on the lookout for the right sort of businesses and people to attract to the town. Some of the people they got included a gnome alchemist and a psion. The alchemist set up shop and the psion set up an academy.
It turned out to be a very cool town - it has been featured in another campaign of mine.
I'm not exactly sure what the question is as you seem to cover a number of points in your description. Are you asking us if we have ever played something like an Adventurers Guild? Are you asking us if we have ever had parties were each player has more then once character? Are we being asked about the excitement of having a friendly town in which the party is closely aligned and trying to help?
Really your post could be about any of these things.
For myself I run a campaign were each player has more then one character but can only take one on the adventure. Its got some strong points in its favor and some significant weak points as well. If this was your topic of interest I can go into more detail about my experience using this system and its strong and weak points but I'll save, that as it will be a long post, until I know better what your really interested in for the topic of this thread.
This is one of those times where it is a grand idea to actually sit and chat with your GM and vis-a-versa. As it always happens this was one of those things that was a side character issue where my Character...Yes I was a player in the Lilith game she mentioned above...Actually believed that his mission in life was, to get this, 'Reunite the elven races' However The setting up of a town was not part of the plan. However when this did indeed happen the amount plot opportunities increased exponentially. Did we as a group, GM and Players, take advantage of these opportunities? No.
Use this as a lesson that it is paramount to a great gamming experience is to periodically sit and chat. Get an idea of where a group is at, where it wants to go, where it sees itself as a group of players and characters within a period of time...etc
The only long term problem that I could forsee is the perceived threat to the local power structure of the local lord and or king. Your guild got really big really fast, and the money that you were spending in town gave you a lot of political clout. It could make people nervous.
This is a fairly interesting idea, I've seen similar things in my years of gaming but nothing quite as.. well, big.
In the campaign I'm running now, I am planning on doing something similar in that each player will have multiple characters, introduced into the game as time goes on. I may use something like setting up the fortress/town, choosing which characters go where for each adventure. Not really sure yet though, I may keep most of them seperate for simplicity. It's too early to say for sure though, as things are still in their infancy in my game. (Only have two sessions under our belt, which has mostly just been some minor tasks to help people get a feel for their characters and establish group cohesion)
This does intrigue me though, setting up a town/castle/outpost as a base of operations with multiple groups of adventurers (Or multiple adventurers joining with each other for one or two quests here and there) using it as a staging ground. I need to track down some good resources on setting up an economy/town from scratch, anyone got any advice? Nothing overly complicated, just something to give a framework to the methods and pitfalls that go along with starting a new town from the ground up. (Not building a pre-made town, but actually settling one, attracting residents and businesses, etc)
I'm not exactly sure what the question is as you seem to cover a number of points in your description. Are you asking us if we have ever played something like an Adventurers Guild? Are you asking us if we have ever had parties were each player has more then once character? Are we being asked about the excitement of having a friendly town in which the party is closely aligned and trying to help?
Really your post could be about any of these things.
For myself I run a campaign were each player has more then one character but can only take one on the adventure. Its got some strong points in its favor and some significant weak points as well. If this was your topic of interest I can go into more detail about my experience using this system and its strong and weak points but I'll save, that as it will be a long post, until I know better what your really interested in for the topic of this thread.
I am interested in anything that anyone has to say on all of the above. Your right though, I began that post wanting to ask if there were any pitfalls that were waiting for me or my group but by the time I got around to the question I had made numerous statements. I guess I type out loud.
As to the power struggle. When we started the stronghold was given to us by the lord of the land (I can't remember if he was a king but I think he was close) with the intent to rebuild the town and get it running to help put a human foothold in a dangerous area of his domain. So we weren't in much heat with the local government. However I will have to think carefully about that. It may not be the same story for my players and I.
What added to the excitement was that everytime we set out on a mission we had to build two teams. One capable of finishing the quest and one powerful enough to protect the constantly assaulted city.
This is a fairly interesting idea, I've seen similar things in my years of gaming but nothing quite as.. well, big.
In the campaign I'm running now, I am planning on doing something similar in that each player will have multiple characters, introduced into the game as time goes on. I may use something like setting up the fortress/town, choosing which characters go where for each adventure. Not really sure yet though, I may keep most of them seperate for simplicity. It's too early to say for sure though, as things are still in their infancy in my game. (Only have two sessions under our belt, which has mostly just been some minor tasks to help people get a feel for their characters and establish group cohesion)
This does intrigue me though, setting up a town/castle/outpost as a base of operations with multiple groups of adventurers (Or multiple adventurers joining with each other for one or two quests here and there) using it as a staging ground. I need to track down some good resources on setting up an economy/town from scratch, anyone got any advice? Nothing overly complicated, just something to give a framework to the methods and pitfalls that go along with starting a new town from the ground up. (Not building a pre-made town, but actually settling one, attracting residents and businesses, etc)
I'm not sure what your players resources are like but we ended up forking over a lot of cash so we could get some quick migration. We needed farms and defences and nobility and laborers and temporary housing for the laborers. And we had to put adventuring on the backburners for two years so the Paladin could act as the towns figurehead and ensure everyone that their protectors weren't going to run off into a neighboring country and die.
We did everything with a 10th grade understanding of economics and even less about medeival society and had it mostly slapped together in about 4 hours of discussion and note taking. If we were unsure about how something was going to work we hired a team of experts to keep track of it and moved on. Something more in depth would be nice but it would also be very complicated and slow the game down. So my advice is just to sit down with your group and wing out ideas until everyone is happy.
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SexiGolem that sounds like a terrific campaign, thanks for sharing. It's so good, I may have to try it myself once my current party stops the Age of Worms.
Jeremy - Here's another vote in favor of more details on whatever topic you wish to speak. I'd really be interested in hearing more about the disadvantages of the team approach. The amount of treasure you would need strikes me as the biggest difficult.
I'm not sure what your players resources are like but we ended up forking over a lot of cash so we could get some quick migration. We needed farms and defences and nobility and laborers and temporary housing for the laborers. And we had to put adventuring on the backburners for two years so the Paladin could act as the towns figurehead and ensure everyone that their protectors weren't going to run off into a neighboring country and die.We did everything with a 10th grade understanding of economics and even less about medeival society and had it mostly slapped together in about 4 hours of discussion and note taking. If we were unsure about how something was going...
Right now, the parties resources are pretty much nil, since they're still 1st level and haven't really earned any money yet.
I realize that putting too much emphasis on minor details for something like this would slow the whole mess down to a crawl. I'm more interested in the information from the standpoint of what to keep in my head while working with the players. Hiring a team of experts is a good option for dealing with things that the characters (Or players) have no understanding of, but I think it would be good to have a basic working knowledge of how such things would be done as a DM in that situation.
I'll admit it, I haven't DMed that many games and haven't DMed at all in over a decade. I'm rusty and a little paranoid. So far I haven't proved to my own satisfaction that I am very good at winging it. The two games we've played thus far, I've been the one slowing things down more than not. Hopefuly before anything like this becomes an issue, I'll have gotten my proverbial feet on the right path though. I'm still nervous and akward at the moment, plus I'm running a game for a group of rather creative people who manage to catch me from a blind side more often than not. I think it's going to take a while to get the hang of it all.
I think the idea screams for a less traditional campaign. Not so much Conan and Subati and more X-men Blue and X-men Gold. I think that the additional burdens of actually governing the town that the adventures protect may be overwhelming, however. Perhaps each player should have a non-adventuring character (say an aristocrat or an expert) as part of their portfolio of PCs?