Looking For Advice On A Shared Campaign [Archive] - Wizards Community

Looking For Advice On A Shared Campaign [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Master of Thonbria
01-27-08, 11:34 PM Greetings.

I have been running my own original campaign for over a decade (minus a couple of breaks along the way) and I have one more story arc to run for it before I close the book for the foreseeable future. To follow up this mega-opus, I am looking at several different ideas, some of which further develop ideas I use in convention adventures and some of which are totally new. I like them all, as do my players, but one idea keeps coming back to the forefront of my mind.

The thought of creating and running a shared campaign setting is very intriguing. Basically, the players and I sit down and throw random story ideas, monsters, location and whatnot onto the table and see what develops. After a bit of work and brainstorming to draft a workable but loose campaign setting, we rotate GM responsibilities after every three- or four-session adventure. The thought is multiple creative minds will be able to avoid burnout and breed interesting story elements.

Has anyone done this type of thing? What pitfalls exist? Is it feasible or am I overly-optimistic that a group of opinionated and highly individualist players can accomplish this? I would appreciate any thoughts, comments and/or advice on the mechanics of this type of project.

Thank you ... and happy gaming!
Orloff
01-28-08, 01:20 AM I've been in games of this nature in the past, more out of necessity then design. I think the key would be to make sure that everybody is on board with the idea that nobody has final say on the setting. I'd try to establish loose guidelines on what a DM can and cannot change without the consent of the rest of the group (major NPCs can't have overnight personality shifts, etc.). As long as your players are willing to play along and accept each-others' ideas, it could be lots of fun.
Lord QZip
01-28-08, 01:32 AM My group tried a similar project. The idea was similar, make a back-burner campaign setting that can be run by whoever could DM, could be explained to new players quickly, and would have little intricacy (sp?) involved. What they decided on (I wasn't in the group at the time) was to have a very small world. About a 60? mile radius of habitable land sourrounded by vast stretches of desert to the horizon. The people of this place have no memory of what happened before so many hundred years ago. There's no pantheon of Gods. The world is very simple. The people have no invaders to worry about and few magical beasts. The place, however, seems to contain portals to every other plane that is in existence. As well, the place is not 'tied down' to any specific world. It seems to appear on various other planets from time to time, replacing the desert with more sinister adversaries. That's basically the campaign setting in a nutshell (without how it eventually developed, becoming more complicated with time).

There were 5 major cities, one on each compass point and one in the middle (aptly named centerville /shock) and each settlement (with the exception of centerville) was dedicated to a single species, for the most part. The elvish houses were named after colors, the average alignment of races was swapped, while keeping thier unique qualities (the orcs crusading around with their barbarian ways trying to bring law to the world, basically being vigilantes, the elves living so long that they're selfish and racist because everyone else will just leave them anyway, halflings... not sure, dwarfs still being shut-ins but greedy shut-ins).

As you can see, even those elaborations that came later were fairly simple. There's only about 5 events in the history that ever happened, and multiple DM's were able to successfully work in it.
Orchomenos
01-28-08, 10:16 AM Something like a Startrek, Slider, Doctor Who, Sinbad or Stargate show. The PCs are an exploration team on a ship, magical ship, network of portals (Sigil?), etc. and they are performing a serie of short missions. Most are not related (or rather, they all have the same story arc), but some might involve a BBEG, long-term villain, or hostile nation.

So most players could have non-related missions, one players could specialise DMing klingons or orcs missions, another one could be DMing apparently unrelated missions, with an hidden story arc...

This is relatively safe, since the PCs are not stucked in some exotic place the next DM won't be able to use.

One pitfall I just thought about was the question of rewards and XP. Will each DM give the same money & items? I suggest to have the DM's PC return home, be on recovery or on other duties when the DM is DMing (???) instead of being a DMPC. This way, it's less tempting to award yourself a good magic item for the next sessions. About XP, I suggest not using it at all; at each 3 missions (or complete DM rotation), the PCs take one level.
Lord QZip
01-28-08, 12:59 PM I just thought, you could do the good ol' put all the PC's in a guild together thing. That way, say someone's gone, well, their character wasn't assigned to you for this mission, new guy tries to join the group, a new guy just joined the guild and we need to test him out, etc. It's all pretty informal. If everyone happens to know a certain campaign setting well, then you could set the guild in that setting. Ensure the guild has enough clout to be an influence very far away so that the PC's will do a lot of traveling (so other DM's can send them basically anywhere, always finding unknown lands).
Araes
01-28-08, 11:59 PM Not sure if you've heard about it before, but you might look into using Dawn of Worlds (www.clanwebsite.org/games/rpg/Dawn_of_Worlds_game_1_0Final.pdf) (pdf) if you are interested in creating the setting they're going to play in collaboratively. Its a group world building game that you would play before your game, and through the actions of your players you would help to build up the story and history of your new world.

If you have cooperative players, one benefit is that it allows each person to have some impact on where the world is going to go, and to include things that they might like to see in their own portions of the game.

If proper ground rules aren't discussed a bit beforehand though, and a consensus come to on some things like amounts of magic and technology, you can run into some issues.

Some modifications to the base rules I might suggest are:

Only allow people to "own" a civilization for a limited period of time, and then remove all barriers to other people changing it. This can help avoid people trying to "win" the game.
Allow, or even create rules to handle things like diplomacy and the solving of problems without just armies.
Either limit advances for civilizations, or change the combat mechanic, as with the current mechanic, statistically even a +2 advancement bonus is enough to nearly seal victory against staggering odds. This really saps the tension of epic battles.
Master of Thonbria
02-03-08, 01:44 PM Thank you for the feedback. I have a new wrinkle though. A couple of my players have suggested doing this "shared campaign" thing with the current decade-plus old campaign. Basically, they would like to see a reboot or retcon to which everyone contributes. I don't mind the thought since it does allow for more involvement from the group and the potential for major changes in the world are very high after the next story arc.

So, do you folks have any additional or different views about this possibility?

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Master of Thonbria 01-27-08, 11:34 PM	Greetings. I have been running my own original campaign for over a decade (minus a couple of breaks along the way) and I have one more story arc to run for it before I close the book for the foreseeable future. To follow up this mega-opus, I am looking at several different ideas, some of which further develop ideas I use in convention adventures and some of which are totally new. I like them all, as do my players, but one idea keeps coming back to the forefront of my mind. The thought of creating and running a shared campaign setting is very intriguing. Basically, the players and I sit down and throw random story ideas, monsters, location and whatnot onto the table and see what develops. After a bit of work and brainstorming to draft a workable but loose campaign setting, we rotate GM responsibilities after every three- or four-session adventure. The thought is multiple creative minds will be able to avoid burnout and breed interesting story elements. Has anyone done this type of thing? What pitfalls exist? Is it feasible or am I overly-optimistic that a group of opinionated and highly individualist players can accomplish this? I would appreciate any thoughts, comments and/or advice on the mechanics of this type of project. Thank you ... and happy gaming!
Orloff 01-28-08, 01:20 AM	I've been in games of this nature in the past, more out of necessity then design. I think the key would be to make sure that everybody is on board with the idea that nobody has final say on the setting. I'd try to establish loose guidelines on what a DM can and cannot change without the consent of the rest of the group (major NPCs can't have overnight personality shifts, etc.). As long as your players are willing to play along and accept each-others' ideas, it could be lots of fun.
Lord QZip 01-28-08, 01:32 AM	My group tried a similar project. The idea was similar, make a back-burner campaign setting that can be run by whoever could DM, could be explained to new players quickly, and would have little intricacy (sp?) involved. What they decided on (I wasn't in the group at the time) was to have a very small world. About a 60? mile radius of habitable land sourrounded by vast stretches of desert to the horizon. The people of this place have no memory of what happened before so many hundred years ago. There's no pantheon of Gods. The world is very simple. The people have no invaders to worry about and few magical beasts. The place, however, seems to contain portals to every other plane that is in existence. As well, the place is not 'tied down' to any specific world. It seems to appear on various other planets from time to time, replacing the desert with more sinister adversaries. That's basically the campaign setting in a nutshell (without how it eventually developed, becoming more complicated with time). There were 5 major cities, one on each compass point and one in the middle (aptly named centerville /shock) and each settlement (with the exception of centerville) was dedicated to a single species, for the most part. The elvish houses were named after colors, the average alignment of races was swapped, while keeping thier unique qualities (the orcs crusading around with their barbarian ways trying to bring law to the world, basically being vigilantes, the elves living so long that they're selfish and racist because everyone else will just leave them anyway, halflings... not sure, dwarfs still being shut-ins but greedy shut-ins). As you can see, even those elaborations that came later were fairly simple. There's only about 5 events in the history that ever happened, and multiple DM's were able to successfully work in it.
Orchomenos 01-28-08, 10:16 AM	Something like a Startrek, Slider, Doctor Who, Sinbad or Stargate show. The PCs are an exploration team on a ship, magical ship, network of portals (Sigil?), etc. and they are performing a serie of short missions. Most are not related (or rather, they all have the same story arc), but some might involve a BBEG, long-term villain, or hostile nation. So most players could have non-related missions, one players could specialise DMing klingons or orcs missions, another one could be DMing apparently unrelated missions, with an hidden story arc... This is relatively safe, since the PCs are not stucked in some exotic place the next DM won't be able to use. One pitfall I just thought about was the question of rewards and XP. Will each DM give the same money & items? I suggest to have the DM's PC return home, be on recovery or on other duties when the DM is DMing (???) instead of being a DMPC. This way, it's less tempting to award yourself a good magic item for the next sessions. About XP, I suggest not using it at all; at each 3 missions (or complete DM rotation), the PCs take one level.
Lord QZip 01-28-08, 12:59 PM	I just thought, you could do the good ol' put all the PC's in a guild together thing. That way, say someone's gone, well, their character wasn't assigned to you for this mission, new guy tries to join the group, a new guy just joined the guild and we need to test him out, etc. It's all pretty informal. If everyone happens to know a certain campaign setting well, then you could set the guild in that setting. Ensure the guild has enough clout to be an influence very far away so that the PC's will do a lot of traveling (so other DM's can send them basically anywhere, always finding unknown lands).
Araes 01-28-08, 11:59 PM	Not sure if you've heard about it before, but you might look into using Dawn of Worlds (www.clanwebsite.org/games/rpg/Dawn_of_Worlds_game_1_0Final.pdf) (pdf) if you are interested in creating the setting they're going to play in collaboratively. Its a group world building game that you would play before your game, and through the actions of your players you would help to build up the story and history of your new world. If you have cooperative players, one benefit is that it allows each person to have some impact on where the world is going to go, and to include things that they might like to see in their own portions of the game. If proper ground rules aren't discussed a bit beforehand though, and a consensus come to on some things like amounts of magic and technology, you can run into some issues. Some modifications to the base rules I might suggest are: Only allow people to "own" a civilization for a limited period of time, and then remove all barriers to other people changing it. This can help avoid people trying to "win" the game. Allow, or even create rules to handle things like diplomacy and the solving of problems without just armies. Either limit advances for civilizations, or change the combat mechanic, as with the current mechanic, statistically even a +2 advancement bonus is enough to nearly seal victory against staggering odds. This really saps the tension of epic battles.
Master of Thonbria 02-03-08, 01:44 PM	Thank you for the feedback. I have a new wrinkle though. A couple of my players have suggested doing this "shared campaign" thing with the current decade-plus old campaign. Basically, they would like to see a reboot or retcon to which everyone contributes. I don't mind the thought since it does allow for more involvement from the group and the potential for major changes in the world are very high after the next story arc. So, do you folks have any additional or different views about this possibility?