Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Xavorin 06-16-07, 10:18 AM	Hello! Thanks in advance for any help here. Anyway, recently our group switched from me DMing to another group member DMing. He's a great DM, and I'm really enjoying playing a character (Paladins can be SO fun to role-play :D). However, our new DM does have a fairly full schedule, and so instead of meeting once per week, we've been having gaps as large as two or three weeks in between. Now, I know many groups meet once a month or something, but we're used to meeting once per week and we enjoy it. So I have a question: Should I buy a pre-made adventure or something, and then when our DM can't make a meeting, I just run the adventure I bought so that we can almost always have a meeting once per week? (I would have someone play my character so that he doesn't get behind on XP.) Help/comments/suggestions/whatever else is welcome. Just don't call me a whiner for complaining about not playing once per week, please. Thank you!
User5127 06-16-07, 10:23 AM	sounds fine to me. It may not mesh 100% well with the soty the first DM has. so talk to him/her first. But this idea could be made to work in a story sense. Play the game like a tv show where the last episode doesn't reflect upon the prevoious or next one. Then include a normal story arc to it. so you would have the normal game (normal story arc) intersperesed with standalone episodes to the series (your prebought adventures). Or an even better way would be to allow a small change in the camapign. see if DM 1 will include dreamscape into the campaign. then when the players go to bed they all wind up on the same dream and have the adventure. This could even lead to new story ideas for the 1st DM to use in their campaign, like why are the PCs having the same dreams night after night?
Toran_A_Sunder 06-16-07, 10:27 AM	A friend of mine and me alternate as DMs so there is always a game going on each week. Different characters, different plot. Hell, most times different campaign settings. As long as your friend doesn't mind go for it. Nothing wrong with more than one game going on at one time.
Xavorin 06-16-07, 10:33 AM	sounds fine to me. It may not mesh 100% well with the soty the first DM has. so talk to him/her first. But this idea could be made to work in a story sense. Play the game like a tv show where the last episode doesn't reflect upon the prevoious or next one. Then include a normal story arc to it. so you would have the normal game (normal story arc) intersperesed with standalone episodes to the series (your prebought adventures). Or an even better way would be to allow a small change in the camapign. see if DM 1 will include dreamscape into the campaign. then when the players go to bed they all wind up on the same dream and have the adventure. This could even lead to new story ideas for the 1st DM to use in their campaign, like why are the PCs having the same dreams night after night? I love that idea! I'm running it through my DM's brain as we speak :D. A friend of mine and me alternate as DMs so there is always a game going on each week. Different characters, different plot. Hell, most times different campaign settings. As long as your friend doesn't mind go for it. Nothing wrong with more than one game going on at one time. Well, I was going to have it so that there are same characters, but different plot. But I don't think the DM minds. He said, and I quote: "but the adventure thing sounds fine".
User5127 06-16-07, 10:45 AM	in additon the DM will have a few extra optionis. Say every bunkers down for the night mid adventure on his day to DM. Obviously we aren't going to cut it short and do a premade everytime the group sleeps. So instead all the PCs jsut share a non adventure dream of sorts. Nothing big or special. Could be something as small as them all dreaming they are in a tavern in a small town, or they are all farmers in the dream tilling fields. The other thing as well would be the transition from one adventure to the other. So you and this DM may have to work together a bit to figure out how/when they all fall asleep for yours to take place. Or not. :D lol, it is your game after all. have fun with it. What would be really interesting at high levels is perhaps eventually they don't even fall asleep to go to dreamscape but as strangely put into a kind of transe and share a waking dream. and then at even higher levels they could be pulled completly to dream scape as part of the campaign itself. As a PC i know i would be hella curious as to why this is happening.
Ayra 06-16-07, 11:10 AM	Make a seperate campaign that runs only if your DM doesn't make it, based on premade quests. Only do this, however, if there are a lot of times the main DM can't show up. If you do this it might directly inflict with your main DM's storyline. If he comes back prior to you having finished the premade, he'll have to finish it and he might not be very interested in doing so. Additionally you might be accused of favoritism towards your paladin so you should be careful with that in any group. As a main rule never DM in a campaign with a character in it you're going to play with. Even if you can resist the urges of helping your character out, the other players can accuse you of it and it's not exactly a nice feeling. I've had that happen to me in private online games I both played and staffed on.
Xavorin 06-17-07, 09:31 AM	Make a seperate campaign that runs only if your DM doesn't make it, based on premade quests. Only do this, however, if there are a lot of times the main DM can't show up. If you do this it might directly inflict with your main DM's storyline. If he comes back prior to you having finished the premade, he'll have to finish it and he might not be very interested in doing so. Additionally you might be accused of favoritism towards your paladin so you should be careful with that in any group. As a main rule never DM in a campaign with a character in it you're going to play with. Even if you can resist the urges of helping your character out, the other players can accuse you of it and it's not exactly a nice feeling. I've had that happen to me in private online games I both played and staffed on. A very good point. I guess what I could do, to alleviate that, is to have them just make up a new character each, and when the main DM can't make it they just play those characters. I just wouldn't make a new character. And I'd deffinitely buy a pre-made. I don't want to go through the hassle of making another campaign. Maps are a pain.
User5127 06-17-07, 11:58 AM	A very good point. I guess what I could do, to alleviate that, is to have them just make up a new character each, and when the main DM can't make it they just play those characters. I just wouldn't make a new character. And I'd deffinitely buy a pre-made. I don't want to go through the hassle of making another campaign. Maps are a pain. If you went with my idea I would keep all the same characters. The PCs just don't gain any EXP since it was all a dream. if a player dies in the game, it was just a dream. From the sounds of things you just want to play D&D in between sessions and aren't planning on developing a campaign. This way you can work that into the pre-existing campaign and give the DM some adventure plot hooks. You also solve the issue of favouritisms since your PC can't really benefit or lose anything there is no way you can play favourites then. Because it is all a dream. Just talk it out with the players if you like this idea and tell them flat out that it's just for fun. Then after each session sum up what happened for the other DM (since chances are he may not be there) so then he can decide to work it into the existing campaign and what not. It would be interesting for example for a NPC to know exactly what happened during a dream the players had. Maybe some one from the Society of Sensation in Sigil has devised new ways to capture experiences and store them. This evil wizard is using not only your party but several other people as guinea pigs, creating experiences via dreams and storing them. Patrons to the society would them tap the experience stones to feel what it must have felt like to have the experience of being eaten alive or being prince of the kingdom. (just look up some stuff on Sigil and the Society for more info) :D
Xavorin 06-17-07, 06:33 PM	If you went with my idea I would keep all the same characters. The PCs just don't gain any EXP since it was all a dream. if a player dies in the game, it was just a dream. From the sounds of things you just want to play D&D in between sessions and aren't planning on developing a campaign. This way you can work that into the pre-existing campaign and give the DM some adventure plot hooks. You also solve the issue of favouritisms since your PC can't really benefit or lose anything there is no way you can play favourites then. Because it is all a dream. Just talk it out with the players if you like this idea and tell them flat out that it's just for fun. Then after each session sum up what happened for the other DM (since chances are he may not be there) so then he can decide to work it into the existing campaign and what not. It would be interesting for example for a NPC to know exactly what happened during a dream the players had. Maybe some one from the Society of Sensation in Sigil has devised new ways to capture experiences and store them. This evil wizard is using not only your party but several other people as guinea pigs, creating experiences via dreams and storing them. Patrons to the society would them tap the experience stones to feel what it must have felt like to have the experience of being eaten alive or being prince of the kingdom. (just look up some stuff on Sigil and the Society for more info) :D Ah, I get it now! That's awesome, since I think they'd hate to play any character that's not their current one. And the idea of working plot hooks in is a great one. I'll make sure my DM sees that!
Ayra 06-18-07, 03:42 AM	Ah, I get it now! That's awesome, since I think they'd hate to play any character that's not their current one. And the idea of working plot hooks in is a great one. I'll make sure my DM sees that! But if players can't die, nothing has permanent consequences and they won't get XP or loot from it, not every group would enjoy this. It strongly depends on what kind of group you have. The fact they'll wake up again next session is reason enough to run around reckless for most.
Xavorin 06-18-07, 09:35 AM	But if players can't die, nothing has permanent consequences and they won't get XP or loot from it, not every group would enjoy this. It strongly depends on what kind of group you have. The fact they'll wake up again next session is reason enough to run around reckless for most. That's true... Then again, it would be fun to see exactly how reckless they are :D.
CryoSilver 06-18-07, 10:29 AM	You could always run an entirely separate game, with totally different characters.
Ayra 06-18-07, 11:06 AM	That's true... Then again, it would be fun to see exactly how reckless they are :D. Good point ;) You could always run an entirely separate game, with totally different characters. The problem with that is, that the campaign becomes rather dull because it can't be played often, or it takes over the main quest because it gets played more often (Depending on how often the main DM is available). Another campaign might also be too extended for this. It's truly a hard decision to make! But creating small side-quests wouldn't be such a big deal. Talk it over with the main DM, and (s)he can give you an amount of XP you can give to the party per quest done. The paladin could then also gain XP, because you as a player have been DMing while your paladin has been doing paladin-like things, like saving babies. Doing sidequests for a little bit of cash and extra xp wouldn't be such a bad thing, in my eyes, as long as you don't interfere with what the DM has planned :P
User5127 06-18-07, 02:17 PM	But if players can't die, nothing has permanent consequences and they won't get XP or loot from it, not every group would enjoy this. It strongly depends on what kind of group you have. The fact they'll wake up again next session is reason enough to run around reckless for most. While it would be interesting to see how rekless they become, I would talk with the players out of game and ask that they roleplay a little as if there would be a reward system in place and what not. Reason: "You are dreaming and generally don't know that it's all fake."
CCS 06-18-07, 04:26 PM	Hello! Thanks in advance for any help here. Anyway, recently our group switched from me DMing to another group member DMing. He's a great DM, and I'm really enjoying playing a character (Paladins can be SO fun to role-play :D). However, our new DM does have a fairly full schedule, and so instead of meeting once per week, we've been having gaps as large as two or three weeks in between. Now, I know many groups meet once a month or something, but we're used to meeting once per week and we enjoy it. So I have a question: Should I buy a pre-made adventure or something, and then when our DM can't make a meeting, I just run the adventure I bought so that we can almost always have a meeting once per week? (I would have someone play my character so that he doesn't get behind on XP.) Help/comments/suggestions/whatever else is welcome. Just don't call me a whiner for complaining about not playing once per week, please. Thank you! No. You should NOT do this. If you all want a game every week, regardless if the current DM can make it or not, is this; DM#1 runs their campaign whenever possible. DM#2(you) starts a NEW campaign, with completely different characters, and runs that whenever #1 can't make it.
Ayra 06-18-07, 04:46 PM	While it would be interesting to see how rekless they become, I would talk with the players out of game and ask that they roleplay a little as if there would be a reward system in place and what not. Reason: "You are dreaming and generally don't know that it's all fake." True, but it requires mature players. I'm not kidding when I tell you that I know people who would get bored and start doing other stuff instead of actively playing the session. It's silly, but for some people progression is something they desire more than the actual roleplaying and it's not a bad thing. D&D without progression would be pretty boring eventually, in my eyes, though I personally wouldn't mind playing a reward less game. But I'd still add some kind of reward that you discuss with the main DM. Like max. 1500 XP per session he's not there and about 2000 GP on rewards (both, of course, depending on level!) and the PC's just do a side-quest. You can even say that they have already done that side-quest before they started on the main quest and pretending it all happened already when the main quest continues. As long as it's uninvolved with the main quest, it shouldn't matter ;) But yeah! Every DM does it differently and both methods can work, depending on the party ;)