It has occurred to me recently that I haven't really addressed the idea of letting other people roll through Felltower. That is, letting other gamers play in the playground I wrote for my own group - and letting those results stick in the game I play with my face-to-face group.
I designed the dungeon mostly with my own group in mind. I wrote what I thought was cool and that they'd find cool, too. But in the back of my mind, I have considered for a while the possibility of using it - in the same in-game continuity - with other players. Online, I mean - new face-to-face players would just be added to my group.
But I did not explicitly make that part of the underlying assumption of the game. I didn't come right out on session 1 and say "Guys, I can and will use this dungeon with other gamers." I didn't find out if they are okay with that.
Ultimately, I need to ask my players. If they say no . . . well, it's not just my megadungeon, it's our megadungeon. Or to put it another way, it's my dungeon but it's our game. I know they'd be fine with me running people through it in a separate continuity, but that's not what I'd want to do. I would want it to be one dungeon, with multiple groups, so people would experience the whole "living dungeon" organically and not artificially (where I say, okay, NPC party cleared rooms 4, 5, and 17 and one died in the hallway near 18)
If allowing other groups to rampage through the dungeon they play in makes it a better dungeon for them, and a better game for them, I think it's a good idea for my group.
If they don't think the idea is so keen, or the worry about losing the good loot or stumbling across traps laid by "enemy" groups makes the game less fun, then it's a bad idea for my group.
I think both thoughts on it are okay. For some, the competition would mean more fun ("Let's see what the dungeon looks like now, after the other guys went in.") For others, it might just mean stress ("We can't play this weekend so the other guys might loot the secret treasury we found.") And that stress can take away the relaxation of playing a paper man through an imaginary obstacle course.*
My plan is to ask them what they think, and then go from there.
If I did play with multiple groups, it would make session reports a real issue. Would you want to know the other guys know exactly what you did, where you went, and what you took home?
It would also make inter-party conflict a potential issue.
So there is a lot to think about, even if they say yes.
* I do a little MMA (here). I've competed, and I know people who haven't. For some, competition sharpens the game - give training an edge and makes it more interesting. For others, competition changes it from "learning cool things" into a stressful, learn-or-die situation. I think both approaches are good, and I don't knock anyone who doesn't want to turn their hobby into a competitive event. I just need to find out, from a gaming perspective, if my players are largely in the first group or the second.
Well, if you ever run it online, and you do at a time where us Europeans can play, then I really want in ;)
ReplyDeleteI would also like to play in one of your games online.
DeleteIf I run one, I'll announce it here! Right now it's purely hypothetical; I have no specific plans to run one.
DeleteManaging a timeline somehow could also get complicated; you say that there would be pressure to play - is that because you would simply assume that a group that can't get together for a game remain inactive somehow?
ReplyDeleteYes, otherwise I would need to figure out how to coordinate which group is where and who affects what upstream of a group that already played.
DeleteI normally track time by saying the date is the date. So if Group A players on 2/17, and Group B plays on 2/24, and then Group A again on 3/3, A was inactive for two weeks by the second session and B for one week.
I would suggest that the PCs for one campaign in Felltower are NPCs in another campaign. That is to say, the GMs of each campaign, using the same setting, can exchange plat reports, and use them as non-binding descriptions of NPC activities. Multiple GMs would agree to conventions that you use; for example, PCs adventure, then return to a base, a week of game time goes by, and they adventure again. If the other group gets in two sessions, the PCs took a week off. If it is pretty even back and forth, Campaign A is adventuring on Wednesdays in game, while Campaign B go to Felltower on Saturdays.
ReplyDeleteFor example, if Campaign A's PCs go through section one first (having started play earlier), and then Campaign B's PCs go into section one, they might find it stripped, with wounded or dead monsters, looted treasure, doors that have been forced or spiked, etc. They push on to section three, skirting most of section two. They get in another session before Campaign A players and GM can meet again, and enter section four, where they suffer a couple of losses and run for their lives, vowing to return for their companion's remains, later. Campaign A meets, spend an extra week of upkeep at the inn, and perhaps heal without resorting to potions, given their extra downtime. They proceed through section one into section two, then finds section three looted. In section four, they discover evidence of fighting, and a couple of dead characters who are PCs in Campaign B. Naturally, they loot the bodies without much thought for proper burial. Campaign B meets, finds the looted bodies, etc.
This means a lot of documenting and collaboration between GMs. It saves the parties from having to square off, and get into direct conflict, while maintaining some sense of urgency. Schedules being what they are, this might not motivate some groups to get together any more often than they do. It might seem like punishment for people with busy lives, with a possibility of looted treasure when they can finally find time. But there may be benefits, as well. Tough monsters that Party A wounds before retreating might be killed off by Party B, or a secret door that Party B failed to find might be discovered and broken open by Party A.
In GURPS terms, each party might serve as Enemy (Rival) to the other, but with some benefits to offset the negative effects. Parties with the same base of operations might stay in different parts of town, and seed false rumors, or perhaps true rumors. I see it as a potentially enriching exchange. It puts more week-to-week work on the two GMs, but it might save them other kinds of work.
There are conventions that most groups accept (all PCs will cooperate, mostly)that make only a little bit of sense in game. Both groups being in the same town might imply that the two groups would meet in a venue where actual combat is unlikely (the Justiciars will come down on fights where weapons are drawn). So there can be NPC on PC trash talk, some exchange of information, etc, that don't match up perfectly from one campaign to the next. The B PCs are NPCs in Campaign A, and vice versa. But the players would need to arbitrarily agree to avoid direct fights, along with the whole "eating from the same trough" deal.
I dunno; neat notion, this sharing a dungeon. I can see benefits to verisimilitude and background richness, but I've never done anything like this. I mostly just steal other people's good ideas without expecting my campaign's events to influence their campaign. The exchange is a potentially cool experiment, given two player groups who are game to try it.
tl;dr version:
DeleteSounds like it could provide a well of mutual inspiration, and would go more smoothly with the understanding that events in one group are not binding in the other group. Shared preparation reduces GM work, increased correspondence increases the work back up. Players need to be on board, as always.
It's not a bad notion, except the part where I find another GM, we share copies of all of my files (including the ones that include unpublished material I might want to publish later), and fill each other in on the details tightly enough that I have time to fit them into my game.
DeleteI was thinking more of running the game for other people another day - much, much less work overall. I only need one copy of the files!
I misunderstood. That could make it easier, then. You could use each campaign to inform the other, but think of them as different stories that don't need to really square with one another. The only trouble then is keeping it all straight.
DeleteThat's a good idea, but it would require some real record keeping.
DeleteI once tried this with a pair of Reign of Steel games in the Washington Protectorate, but one player group blazes through adventures while the other sidles up to them nervously, so they very rapidly got wildly out of sync in spite of having about the same number of play hours per month.
ReplyDeleteIn a dungeon fantasy setting, does it not seem like a very artificial constraint if the two groups can never meet? And what if you end a play session inside the dungeon?
I would just have to never allow play sessions to end in the dungeon, no exceptions.
Delete