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I wrote,
"I always liked that idea-and wanted to create a campaign world with a "papal bull" designating certain regions as belonging to different dm's.
I could never sell anybody on it though; the logistics are bizarre, and I guess I'd have to find people whose brain operates in a way that like that kind of bizarre. I was always wondering how or if it would work."
Dragonchess Player wrote,
"I've tried it before. It works best if you get together ahead of time and agree on the ground rules of the setting (allowable races/classes, deities, expansion books, specific setting quirks like firearms or taint), sketch out a history/mythology, and create thumbnail descriptions of the cultures/nations (orc horse nomads based on the Mongols, dwarf cantons based on the Swiss, etc.). A rough map should also be developed, placing the various large-scale terrain features and cultures/nations.
Then, divide the areas among the DMs for detailed development. Any deviations from the "cannon" established above should be discussed with the other DM developers. Each developer will share a brief overview with the other DMs, similar to a pre-game player's handout for background and character creation.
For running games in the setting, you have two options. Option one: Each DM runs a party that stays in one area (maybe using the Eternal Champion campaign model, detailed on UA pg. 217), with the possibility of multiple parties banding together against world-wide threats. Option two: One party travels between areas, with each DM running sessions in their area. Option two can cause problems, but as long as the DM keeps the setting "cannon" and party composition in mind, they can be dealt with."
I'm starting a new thread cos I was yet again inadvertently threadjacking the Duel with Manthalay thread (my new yr.'s resolution) and I'm loving this subject.
I just like the idea for two reasons: it seems like multiple dungeonmasters could really flesh out a campaign world to a stunning degree, and the phenomenon of dungeonmaster burnout can possibly be avoided without killing or prematurely retiring an adventuring party.
Did you ever see the late 80's/early 90's Shadow World for Rolemaster, Heath? The concept was of a few larger continents, and lots of large and small islands, with each location having its own culture, races, religions, etc. Each product concerned a different area (with a few for the larger continents), and were- presumably- written by different people.
You could try a similar approach.
Make sure you use the guidelines in the first and second paragraphs, or else you can end up with "mini-settings" where things are so different in each area that it doesn't make sense that they're on the same world (without pulling a lame "completely isolated" excuse). This actually happened on my first try in creating a shared world; the other DMs and I created wildly different regions that didn't work together in the same setting, even though we had agreed on the history and cultural regions. Each of us had added rule and story elements in our area without discussing them with each other and the result lacked any real cohesiveness as a setting.
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Did you ever see the late 80's/early 90's Shadow World for Rolemaster, Heath? The concept was of a few larger continents, and lots of large and small islands, with each location having its own culture, races, religions, etc. Each product concerned a different area (with a few for the larger continents), and were- presumably- written by different people.
You could try a similar approach.
I think I saw it but only briefly. I get the jist of what you're saying though.
I was thinking a good variation was a campaign model I saw in Skull and Bones--there's a ship, there are multiple crewmen aboard, and the characters control multiple sets of adventurers at different times, some hi-level (i.e. the Captain, first mate and the ship's mage for instance) and some lower level (a squad of marines and sailors).Then, my addition to this framework would be different islands in the sea owned by different dungeonmasters.
Never quite ran a game set up quite like that, but what my friends and I did do was the following. To begin with, we divided up the settings like this:
Me: Forgotten Realms, DragonLance
My Friend: Greyhawk, Oriental Adventures
We rotated around a bit for a while, but we played A LOT when I was in high school, so we are talking about six hours a week at least when we were in school, and probabaly 30+ hours of roleplaying during the summer months.
After my friends brother got older, we added the following settings to the shebang, and things looked like this:
Me: Forgotten Realms, DragonLance, Kara-Tur, Spelljammer
Friend One: Greyhawk, Planescape
Friend Two: Ravenloft
Friend Three: Lahnkmar
Now, how this relates to what you were saying is that often times we specifically used characters of one another as cameos or even as contacts for other characters in the campaign.
For example, if the PCs from FR left on a Spelljammer and ended up in Greyhawk, I would consult with my friend about characters in that campaign and use them as contacts and cameos while the PCs were there, without really having the PCs alter too much about the campaign.
If the PCs in my friends Greyhawk Campaign did some travel to Sigil (we rarely played actual Planescape so much as used the material to travel the planes . . . Sigil was usually just a stop over, if we say it at all), they ended up meeting FR/Kara-Tur characters from my campaigns.
And between Ningauble's Caves and the Mists of Ravenloft, our other friends had a few chances for cameos as well.
In general, if we wanted to do a crossover, we would go to the other DM and work out the details, and figure out how much interaction the PCs would have with the characters in the other campaign. We also generally limited ourselves to one major crossover per campaign.
Don't know if this does you any good at all, but it did make some of the recurring NPCs, places, and even PCs feel more "real" to have them show up in another DMs campaign and be used for more than just their original purpose.
The concept sounds great, but you'd either need to run it online, or have a lot of DM friend, I think.
If run online and done properly, you would have the possibility of running something World of Warcraft like, only it being an áctual RPG.
Player to player interaction with different groups of people, meeting other adventurers that are actual PC's with their own, deep and intense stories, and playing in a populated and great world.
I've seen people start this before. It's hard, its a lot of work, but the rewards... they are awesome.
Needless to say, should you wish to do this online, I would love to help.
I have played games with multiple DM's and enjoyed them immensely. I have never shared a setting with another DM, but I have been discussing it with one of the players in my group, who, being the rules lawyer, would either make a great or terrible DM. He has a concept of an adventure-path style setting that would basically be a start-to-finish campaign run by multiple DM's who would handle different levels of play. For instance, one would handle 1-5, while another prepped 6-10... etc. He would design the overall setting while the others could add their flavor to the parts they ran. At least that's how I understood the concept.
On the Ren Fest circuit, we had a pair of DM's who co-ran a massive world which started from a tiny town and blossomed to include elements from FR, Greyhawk and other settings. Other DM's occasionally guest starred and ran mini campaigns based in the shared setting, but as mentioned above, perhaps infused with other settings such as Ravenloft, Lankhmar or Planescape.
The two main DM's would alternate high and low level campaigns, and we would run whatever party we felt like, depending on who could make it. We even did Birthright in their shared setting several times. The culmination was a dual-party good vs. evil campaign, where the two parties ultimately met for a one-shot climactic battle DM'ed by both of our referees.
I have also co-DM'ed with several capable people in numerous RPG's as well as multiple D&D settings, usually for larger parties (in one case for an after school program for kids) or one shots, but it can be very fun if done properly. I think trust and communication is important, as well as a respect for boundaries. Of course it sounds like I am talking about relationships, but then again, one of my co-DM'ing stints was with a girl I was dating at the time.
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A long time ago, 2nd edition, I shared Dming duties with two other DMs set in the same world. We worked on a rough world map together, and some very basic background info, and beyond that had no coherent plan for developing the world - each of us would just develop whatever we needed to to play the next adventure we were going to run. It was pretty mish-mash and incoherent, but it kind of worked for us at the time.
Several years ago I designed a campaign setting, DMing a group through my campaign. Then added a second group, playing in the same part of the world at the same time, had an assistant DM sometimes help me develop parts of the world. One of the players from one of the group really wanted to try his hand at DMing, so he ended up running a game set in another part of the world, and further developed the rough notes I had about that area .... that was a pretty good experiment.
Back in College (and 2nd edition), we ran a round-robin campaign. Each person would run essentially an adventure (of a few sessions), then hand it off to the next. When I joined, they'd been playing in Greyhawk, but at the end of our first session we hopped aboard a SpellJammer. We wandered around the Forgotten Realms for a while, before eventually getting sucked into Ravenloft.
We didn't alter the "core rules"-- we used the same version no matter who ran. NPCs were generally run by one GM-- different GMs would offer different quests through different NPCs, so the overlap was low. The PCs generally wandered the worlds, following up on GM provided leads...
It can work very well.
I have played one full campaign as co-DM, playing Ars Magica. We made up a setting (discussed with other players, of course) and broad outline of a campaign (which included nice intrigue, demonic forces etc working in background). Then we made actual adventures separately (as one of us would be playing when the other one was DMing), only, when necessary, agreeing that "this time this plot point should come up, and in next session I will then do that". We DM'd approximately 50-50%, with him more in the beginning and me more in the end.
We also thought beforehand what position our characters would be taking regarding that large plot in the background so when s**t really starts to hit the fan we could play it out sensibly even when we knew what was going to happen (my character ended up betraying other characters, so I DM'd most of the latter sessions when things really started to unfold).
It was great fun but requires good co-operation between DMs and of course a campaign structure where that is possible. This "slowly unfolding plot" is one way, and I do think that "traveling between insular places" is other way.
We tried this a few years ago and it worked okay. The shared world consisted of a gas giant that had a breathable outer atmosphere (a thin layer about 500 miles deep). Trapped within this outer atmosphere were tens of thousands of asteroids, small moons, inhabitable debris. The very upper layer of the atmosphere was an area of incredible high speed winds that could be navigated by the bold and the lucky. We enjoyed the setting immensely, lots of 3-D navigation, skyships, hang gliding....many elements from Spelljammer were included.
That wind maelstrom was the mechanism to move the PCs from one DM's area to the other DM's area. The two DMs shared a character--in other words, the same PC would be played by one or the other DM while the other ran the game.
We're thinking of putting Ptolus in this setting. I'm on a creative sabbatical right now because of work, but it's something we might pick up again after I get my brain back.