Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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It's looking more and more like a typical once a week game will not fit into my life or the lives of my players. With that in mind, I am trying to come up with a campaign that can support our current scheduling constraints, and am seeking the input of my fellow Lords of the Boards. Basically, what I want is a campaign that meets the following criteria:
A. Supports a rotating group of players without a lot of NPC-ing. It's a rare event when all the players can make a particular night, and rather than wait for the stars to align, I want to be able to run a game with whomever I can grab whenever I can grab them.
B. Supports multiple platforms. By that I mean that I want the campaign to have a non-tabletop component that can be run outside the regular sessions. Right now, I'm thinking IM, but something like Fantasy Grounds may be doable. I would also like email to see regular use.
My current idea is to run a campaign based on a guild model. Each player will have 2-3 characters available to run, all of which are members of the guild. Tabletop sessions will be structured for 3-5 players with a relatively short series of encounters. A portion of the xp earned by active characters will be kicked back to the inactive characters to keep leveling consistent. Online sessions will be for 1-3 players.
Here are some questions/issues:
1. What sort of adventure can be done using IM or email? My inclination is scouting/research/roleplaying because those activities are generally a single player affair anyway. Any other suggestions?
2. What are your experiences with online platforms? Do you recommend any particular product or service? Why?
3. Is there a better way to do scouting? An idea I've been tossing around is the concept of failure points. The idea would be that every time you fail a stealth roll, you accumulate failure points which make further stealth rolls more difficult to make. The way I would run it without failure points is that once you fail a stealth roll, the gig is up and the character is about to get beaten up. Normally, you have the rest of the party nearby to save your bacon, but if you're on your own, the character is most likely going to die. What do you think of this subsystem? Any suggestions?
4. Any suggestions for research based adventures or how to spice up the mechanics of research? How about diplomacy? Again, I probably overcomplicate things, but I'm toying with the idea of accumulating research or diplomacy points, sorta like my failure points above. Once you acquire sufficient diplomacy/research points, you get an answer. This allows for something other than a single check/resolution system.
Well, I like the concept of the failure points. That will certainly help to keep scouting characters alive when they don't have a safety net to fall back on.
And I wouldn't worry about getting overly complicated and interactive with the Diplomacy and research subsystems you're interested in. In normal gameplay, over detailing them can be a drag, but in the scenario you're describing, focusing on the non-combat portions of the game are deffinately something that can help you out. I've got nothing right now, but I'll certainly keep it in my head and let you know I think of anything, and I'm sure others are going to come up with some real gems over the next day or so. Paizonians always do! :)
This will really give a lot more time to work on personal quests and development of individual characters, which is something that I feel like there may not be enough time for in many typical gaming sessions.
One thing to do in campaign structure is to keep it VERY character-centric. If there's an overarching plot that they all have to follow, there will be a lot of people missing out on key points here and there, who need to be kept up to date, or might get bent out of shape if they feel they've missed too much. You might also miss sessions and drag out the time between games too long if there's a part that everyone agrees that everyone else should be present for and not miss; then you have to wait for the rare moment that's juuust right....
Rather, you can listen to each character's background and weave what amounts to a separate campaign for each character, which happens to feature the same major antagonists and such for all. That way, when it's time to get together for a game, you can hit the BBEG's dungeon and everyone will be drawn there, but for their own' reasons, and without loosing a lot of time to making sure everyone's on the same page, etc., etc. Then they can split back up and pursue their own stories until the next time they feel the need to regroup with their old combat mates and fight the good fight once more.
Hope this helps!
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I like and use Rich Berlew's diplomacy revamp. I don't know if it something that you are looking for but the guy has some great ideas on diplomacy and knowledge. I use them and love them.
Can't hurt to check them out and lemme know if you like them.
FH
Director of Narrative
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I think your guild model is a great plan, and I really like Saern's tip on keeping it very player-centric. I have thought about ways to continue play at times when my group has less than perfect attendance. One of my plans was very much like your guild model where everyone was part of some far reaching organization. (Seekers, Harpers, Watchers type stuff) I had plans at that time to have them all roll up 3 characters. One low, one mid and one high and then play with whatever or whoever showed up that week. There wouldn't be any real major over-arching storyline and before each "mission" whatever "team/unit" was going on they would recieve a dossier on their task.
My players have always had alot of things they wanted their characters to do and never really had the time to do alot of it when the pace of a full party was pushing them from fortress to dungeon to thorp to valley. Many times when two or more players couldn't make it we would just do some role-playing and really focus on their characters. Cleric wanted to do something special for her patroness the Ruby Sorceress? Fine, let's do it. Wizard wanted to research a new spell? We can do that. Rogue's getting bored and just might have to lift a little weight off that annoying noble? Most definately!
The multi-level idea has some possibilities. You can have one set of goings on for high level characters, who occasionally have to put their armor on and go fight a world-class nasty, but mostly they are running the show as nobles or rulers, high priests, guildmasters, etc. Mid-level characters might be the go-to guys the high-level characters have to send on ordinary missions. And then you've got some peons who are palace servants and pages, but they sometimes turn up some kind of low-level doings that threaten to make things annoying and nasty for the high-level folks.
Good models might be the Three Musketeers, a group of bad-ass heroes who all had servant side-kicks who sometimes got into the action doing things that the musketeers themselves (as members of the nobility) could not or would not do. Or Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time where you have the main characters like Rand and Mat and Egwene get to positions of authority, then they each have an entourage of mid-level and lesser figures to order around and do things. (I find that fiction is very helpful as a guide in figuring out how to devise and tie together adventure plots.)
Oh--and I must say it sounds difficult to run but cool in conception. Might I suggest some sort of a log or newsletter as a way to keep your rotating cast of players informed? I'm sure your fellow Lords would be grateful to see it, just to get some insights and lessons learned from running such a complex campaign.
An Adventuring (or other kind of) Guild sounds like a solid, relatively easily workable idea. You could also theoretically have the characters acting as members (or guests) of a noble court, military force, or pretty much any other setting in which there's a "background" of other characters to draw on for new PCs (and into which inactive PCs can fade.)
A Newsletter or equivalent would definitely be an interesting way to inform players and their characters of what's been going on while they were inactive, and remind those who were there of what happened... and how their actions were viewed by those outside the acting party. In a guild, that might just be a message pinned to a board, while in a noble's court it might take the form of a heraldic declaration or just court gossip. A military model is where I'd have the hardest time fitting it in, largely because I can't imagine that any "standard" military unit would spend much time telling the grunts (low level characters) what the higher ups have been doing.
For years our campaigns have consisted of once a month or once every other, one day marathon sessions. This is due to time and scheduling limitations for our group of 7 (6 players). To run a marathon session, we set the cutoff at four players and the G. Each session is created from scratch by the DM (2 of us over the past 10+ years) based on long and short term goals for each of the characters weather they are present at a session or not. In short, the party drives the storyline, not the GM. It is imperitive that there is a good mix of stopping points to end a session that:
1. Absolutely does not allow the PCs time for interum actions (cliffhangers)
2. Allow the entire party time (PC time) to pursue individual goals and tasks.
Regardless of where the PCs are in time/space, during the interum between sessions, the first job of the DM is to write a campaign summmary as a reference for the next session and a description of the events for those players who were not present.
1. If the PCs are at a cliffhanger (see above), there is no need for interum play via email, solo adventures, phone calls, or whatever. This is typically used as a device to give the DM either a break or extra time to prepare for the next adventure.
2. Should the PCs find themselves unfettered by time/spacial constraints, the group together decides how much game time the PCs have to fiddle with until they meet back up. This puts some limits on possible actions...chiefly due to time limitations. After that, it's a free for all via email, phone, and solo adventures. This allows each PC AND the GM to contribute as much or as little as they wish between sessions.
After many, many years of gaming, this mode of gaming has fit our group's gaming and non-gaming needs very nicely. Most importantly, it drives game action and character development between actual sessions.
Hope this helps.
As ever,
ACE
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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I appreciate the feedback. A couple quick responses:
Thanks for the insight regarding the concerns of a character centric v. plot centric campaign. My initial idea was to create a plot centric campaign because a) they are easier to do and b) they don't require a lot of player involvement. An additional element I should have mentioned is that player commitment varies widely among my group. I have 2-3 players that will do journals, write me constantly, and keep the campaign burning. On the other hand, I have 2-3 players that just show up, roll dice, and put in a good performance at the table. I want to satisfy both parties, and my fear of having a player centric campaign is that those in the later group will not be interested.
That being said, I think the point that this type of campaign should be more character centric is well taken. That leads to a counter question. Given that it's harder to set up a character centric campaign because you need to get player input right off the bat (ideally, the players make the characters, or tell you the type of character and backstory they are interested in, and then the DM builds the world around them) and given that I expect many players will be turned off by making a character and giving me feedback weeks or months before the campaign is to begin, do you have any suggestions for getting the players involved early? My current thought is to lay out a campaign area, describe some of the factions that will be involved, and invite the players to build their characters with that information in mind while being open to introducing new factions/environments as requested.
The diplomacy revamp kicks ass. It's exactly the type of thing I am looking for. Thanks FH!
I've considered the multi-level issue, but I think I am going to try and let it evolve naturally rather than start with mid and high level characters (mostly because low level adventures are easier to prep for and because I like that type of play more).
I generally do newsletters in my campaigns. A typical tool is a "heard on the street" email which contains all sorts of random quotes the players pick up between adventures. They always get a kick out of hearing how the rest of the world reacts to their activities. Plus it allows a lot of foreshadowing. I would like to run a website/blog, but my computer skills are, to say the least, terrible. I can't even get the demo to Fantasy Grounds to work. :-(
I am a little wary of cliffhangers, though I do agree they can be a very effective tool, for a couple reasons. We play infrequently, and the activities between game sessions will be important to keeping things moving. I'm leary of cutting off that avenue of the campaign. Another issue is that I worry about attendance problems. There's nothing worse than a cliffhanger that stays hanging because you can't get all the players together who are involved in said cliffhanger. All that being said, they definitely have their uses, and DM prep is an excellent point.
Again, thanks for the feedback everyone, and please keep it coming.
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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Little bit of a bump - anyone have suggestions for a good website format? Is it relatively easy to set up a blog type site where I can do posts and then have the players comment on those posts? My idea would be to post something like "bandits have been seen raiding the Dwarven High Road" and then have the players respond in character to that post using messages to represent character discussions. Any suggestions?
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Little bit of a bump - anyone have suggestions for a good website format? Is it relatively easy to set up a blog type site where I can do posts and then have the players comment on those posts? My idea would be to post something like "bandits have been seen raiding the Dwarven High Road" and then have the players respond in character to that post using messages to represent character discussions. Any suggestions?
You could do THAT right here at the campaign journal section.
Just a brainstorm.
One of the more computer savvy players in our group has set up a discussion forum on his own. It works great...we keep world info (player guide type of info) with the various subcategories (cultures, races, class info, etc), house rules, player character info (history, goals etc), and general discussion (play times, funnies, etc) all in their own categories. The players and I are addicted...we all check it at least daily, and everyone is quite active. Wouldn't do it any other way now, and is much faster/more flexible than a website/emails/etc.