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[Interest Thread] CALLING ALL FORUMERS: D&D Persistent World Megagame Bonanza
Aroused Bull
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Ladies and gentlemen of the forum, I've got a pitch for you. It's probably not controversial to say that, with some exceptions, most Play by Post games end up dying early. The longer a game runs, the more likely it is for players to leave and have to be replaced, or for the DM to run into a patch of difficulty with their real lives and have to neglect the game.
It's difficult to commit to being a DM. Some people, myself included, might have the ideas and the desire to run an adventure, but know that due to real-life concerns they won't be able to reliably devote the necessary time to run a long-term campaign.
I and some collaborators have come up with a group project intended to fix these problems, by taking some of the burden off the shoulders of DMs, and by providing something of a safety net for players' characters. The gist of it is as follows:
We'll set up a wiki to hold information on a shared setting, using 4E D&D rules, since it's the most popular. The wiki will hold a hex map, and the details of various locations, particularly adventure sites, dungeon crawls, monster lairs and the like.
Rather than being attempting to be any kind of authoratative guide, the map will be mostly blank space, at least to start with. Once we launch the project on the forums, we'll open up the wiki to any DM who wants to participate, new DMs joining at any time by contacting an existing DM. Any DM can add their own contributions to the map, filling in blank spaces and pushing out the borders. They can also draw on any of the existing content for use in adventures. For a visual aide, I imagine the map as ending up looking something like this, emptier and smaller to begin with but becoming more filled in as more people contribute.
At the same time as we open the wiki, we create a main thread in Critical Failures that acts as a common mingling point for players. The thread represents a gathering point for adventurers, probably an inn. Within the thread, player character not currently invovled in an adventure can communicate freely in-character, swap information and roleplay. New players can join at any time, by providing a 1st level character sheet and being approved by any registered DM. The thread also acts as a noticeboad of DM availability - DMs indicate their general availability, what medium they're willing to use for sessions (PbP, maptools, skype, etc), and so forth, and we update the list as appropriate.
Within the thread, players can organise themselves into parties interested in pursuing a particular rumour or exploring a particular area, West Marches style, based on information picked up during their active adventures and from other players (or DMs) in the main thread. They then flag themselves as looking for a DM willing to accomodate them. If a DM takes them up they organise the details and run the adventure in a seperate PbP thread, or over skype or whatever the chosen medium is. When they're finished they return to the general pool of players.
On the other hand, if a DM has a particular adventure they want to run - whether to a location on the wiki, or some location or narrative of their own design - they can post an adventure hook in the main thread in the form of an NPC (refugee, old sage, etc), whereupon interested players can organise a party. After each adventure, the DM has the responsibility of updating the wiki entries of the locations visited to reflect player changes; for example if the players killed the troll in the Caves of Chaos, and pissed off Grobnob the giant by stealing his magic harp, the DM would note this in the wiki for the use of future DMs.
The idea is to give players a chance to experience a lot of adventure as the same characters in a persistent setting. Players can drop out and new ones can join without negatively impacting the game, and players who've been out a long time can rejoin without issues. Having multiple DMs means that even if one vanishes, the players can continue playing with the same characters in the same setting as if nothing had happened.
At the same time, DMs can contribute creatively without having to get tied down running a lengthy campaign, and they can take as much time off as they need between adventures only to return whenever they like to run another. The setting can be nice and open to accomodate different ideas; DMs with an adventure to run have an already-available pool of players to plug into, and different DMs can of course collaborate on anything they like, whether jointly running adventures, general collaboration on ideas and locations for the wiki, or just asking for advice.
The concept works best with shorter adventure arcs and location-based exploration; DMs who took groups of players on year-long excursions would be defeating the purpose. If things go on long enough, there may develop a long-term narrative for the whole community of participants, as player actions affect the world which then affect DM ideas which then affect the players. Theoretically, if it's popular and stays popular, a game like this could run forever, even with a 100% turn-over rate.
To be clear, this isn't something that's starting right now. Part of the reason for this idea is that I'm one of those DMs who doesn't have the free time to devote to a long-term campaign, and most of the others currently involved are the same. I'm pitching it to the forum now, so that we can see whether it would actually be popular enough to be worth going through with, and so that we can hear your opinions. If we get a decent response, we'll work on it in a leisurely sort of way and hopefully kick the whole thing off in January. At that point we'll be present to run some adventures to get the ball rolling, and rely on the community to help carry things from there.
So: would you join as a DM in a megagame like this, if it was launched? Would you join as a player? What's your opinion of our concept, remembering that it's a work-in-progress. Any obvious flaws to point out?
tl;dr A wiki holding a collaborative setting that anyone who joins can add to, and a "hub" thread holding a pool of players who split off into various adventures and recombine to swap information about the world they're exploring.
It's difficult to commit to being a DM. Some people, myself included, might have the ideas and the desire to run an adventure, but know that due to real-life concerns they won't be able to reliably devote the necessary time to run a long-term campaign.
I and some collaborators have come up with a group project intended to fix these problems, by taking some of the burden off the shoulders of DMs, and by providing something of a safety net for players' characters. The gist of it is as follows:
We'll set up a wiki to hold information on a shared setting, using 4E D&D rules, since it's the most popular. The wiki will hold a hex map, and the details of various locations, particularly adventure sites, dungeon crawls, monster lairs and the like.
Rather than being attempting to be any kind of authoratative guide, the map will be mostly blank space, at least to start with. Once we launch the project on the forums, we'll open up the wiki to any DM who wants to participate, new DMs joining at any time by contacting an existing DM. Any DM can add their own contributions to the map, filling in blank spaces and pushing out the borders. They can also draw on any of the existing content for use in adventures. For a visual aide, I imagine the map as ending up looking something like this, emptier and smaller to begin with but becoming more filled in as more people contribute.
At the same time as we open the wiki, we create a main thread in Critical Failures that acts as a common mingling point for players. The thread represents a gathering point for adventurers, probably an inn. Within the thread, player character not currently invovled in an adventure can communicate freely in-character, swap information and roleplay. New players can join at any time, by providing a 1st level character sheet and being approved by any registered DM. The thread also acts as a noticeboad of DM availability - DMs indicate their general availability, what medium they're willing to use for sessions (PbP, maptools, skype, etc), and so forth, and we update the list as appropriate.
Within the thread, players can organise themselves into parties interested in pursuing a particular rumour or exploring a particular area, West Marches style, based on information picked up during their active adventures and from other players (or DMs) in the main thread. They then flag themselves as looking for a DM willing to accomodate them. If a DM takes them up they organise the details and run the adventure in a seperate PbP thread, or over skype or whatever the chosen medium is. When they're finished they return to the general pool of players.
On the other hand, if a DM has a particular adventure they want to run - whether to a location on the wiki, or some location or narrative of their own design - they can post an adventure hook in the main thread in the form of an NPC (refugee, old sage, etc), whereupon interested players can organise a party. After each adventure, the DM has the responsibility of updating the wiki entries of the locations visited to reflect player changes; for example if the players killed the troll in the Caves of Chaos, and pissed off Grobnob the giant by stealing his magic harp, the DM would note this in the wiki for the use of future DMs.
The idea is to give players a chance to experience a lot of adventure as the same characters in a persistent setting. Players can drop out and new ones can join without negatively impacting the game, and players who've been out a long time can rejoin without issues. Having multiple DMs means that even if one vanishes, the players can continue playing with the same characters in the same setting as if nothing had happened.
At the same time, DMs can contribute creatively without having to get tied down running a lengthy campaign, and they can take as much time off as they need between adventures only to return whenever they like to run another. The setting can be nice and open to accomodate different ideas; DMs with an adventure to run have an already-available pool of players to plug into, and different DMs can of course collaborate on anything they like, whether jointly running adventures, general collaboration on ideas and locations for the wiki, or just asking for advice.
The concept works best with shorter adventure arcs and location-based exploration; DMs who took groups of players on year-long excursions would be defeating the purpose. If things go on long enough, there may develop a long-term narrative for the whole community of participants, as player actions affect the world which then affect DM ideas which then affect the players. Theoretically, if it's popular and stays popular, a game like this could run forever, even with a 100% turn-over rate.
To be clear, this isn't something that's starting right now. Part of the reason for this idea is that I'm one of those DMs who doesn't have the free time to devote to a long-term campaign, and most of the others currently involved are the same. I'm pitching it to the forum now, so that we can see whether it would actually be popular enough to be worth going through with, and so that we can hear your opinions. If we get a decent response, we'll work on it in a leisurely sort of way and hopefully kick the whole thing off in January. At that point we'll be present to run some adventures to get the ball rolling, and rely on the community to help carry things from there.
So: would you join as a DM in a megagame like this, if it was launched? Would you join as a player? What's your opinion of our concept, remembering that it's a work-in-progress. Any obvious flaws to point out?
tl;dr A wiki holding a collaborative setting that anyone who joins can add to, and a "hub" thread holding a pool of players who split off into various adventures and recombine to swap information about the world they're exploring.
Aroused Bull on
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http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=39484
might be a helpful inspiration
I see you used PBwiki; how did that work out for you? I'll have a good look over your game sometime soon.
Sort of. The way I currently envisage it, there'll be two main ways characters get into adventures. The first is when DMs post plot hooks to an adventure they want to run. So yes, you'd effectively end up with a list of adventure hooks, and each adventure would be taken off the list as a player-organised party took it up. After they'd finished the adventure the characters would come back to the hub, and the DM would update the world to reflect what changed on their quest.
When players organise their own outings, it would be working from the information they gained while out in the field, or from other players. I intend to liberally sprinkle the wiki with plot hooks and encourage other DMs to do the same. If a party picks up interesting information about opportunities for adventure and riches, but aren't able to pursue it at that time, they can tell their buddies at the inn about it when they get back. Someone might then organise a party to go out and pursue that particular lead, after finding a DM willing to take them. The adventure would be initiated in this case by the players, and the DM would be working with the information in the wiki (including modular dungeons and the like), plus anything of their own they wanted to throw in. This is what I meant by "West Marches style".
An unorthodox style of play like this might not end up as popular as I'd hope - which wouldn't be a problem, since people would just end up not organising that sort of adventure and stick to DM-initiated plots.
I should make it clear that the players will not have access to the wiki. The way I envisage things, players will have virtually no information about the game setting asides from what they start to accumulate from their assorted adventures. The main IC function of the hub thread would probably be the pooling of player information and maps. It builds community spirit!
P.S. I've pimped the title a bit. If this doesn't turn out to be popular, I'd rather it be from a genuine lack of interest than people missing the thread.
Absolutely. We can use search tags for important announcements and I or another DM can catalogue everything in the OP. With mod permission, we could use a shared account to make the OP so that multiple people can edit it. We might have a seperate OOC thread, again with mod permission, for important announcements, and leave the hub thread for character communication and IC plot hooks. I'm sure we can work something out.
Also I've tried a couple of wiki sites and I've found I like wikidot.com the best
It'll be a single collaboratively homebrewed setting. Read the third paragraph of the OP for the gist (I should probably make a tl;dr). When we put together the starting material we'll try to make it as open as possible, I think, to accomodate as many different ideas as there are DMs.
Is the Inn at any particular location or does it transcend time and space like the Captain's Table?
It's not procedurally generated, unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean. DMs can add to the wiki; they can also run their own adventures or adventures based on existing wiki content. Adventures will be for the most part shorter arcs, rather than multi-year campaigns, and after one finishes the player characters can continue adventuring rather than going into limbo as they would if a normal campaign dried up. Arcs may or may not be linked depending on the level of DM collaboration. DMs don't have to commit to longer adventures than they would like, or go to the trouble of continually organising new games, they can plug in and out at will. The only additional workload is in updating the wiki after you finish an adventure. I wouldn't consider that a chore, and it wouldn't take long.
I haven't played much D&D but I understand that the setting like Forgotten Realms can't mix with Dark Sun or Eberron. That's what I mean by there should be different pages for different settings.
Because at any one time they only ever have to commit to a few weeks or a couple months of playing?
There's only one setting. There's no Forgotten Realms, Dark Sun, or Ebberon. Each band of adventurers exists in the same world (the homebrew setting) at the same time.
I was thinking about trying to put together a Marvel "Exiles" style homebrew thing that functioned like this, but the time investment to support it just seemed to be a bit much. It should be interesting though. Kinda like ODAM, as somebody already posted.
To be honoust though all this sounds a little much for one thread. You could try to get an admin to approve a Sub-Forum or something.
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My key concern, which I'm aware isn't one held by all, is that having to keep the adventures so short might make them unrewarding. Trying to keep each one under a few months only really gives time for a few encounters. The way I've been trying to look at it is like episodes of a TV series.
A single thread for this would be madness. If we're going to run it here then it'll be hard enough keeping an up-to-date main thread as an index for characters and games and having the rest floating about.
This could be as easy as two DMs coordinating their efforts using the DM forum.
Yeah, Odam basically started with a very vague intro, and the knowledge that the players were in a room that was on fire. Then, anything that was said by players or DM became part of the world, only whoever said that thing wasn't allowed to be the one to put it into the wiki, so interpretation and expansion was done by someone else using their idea. It was an interesting exercise.
Synchronising in-game time for this can be nightmarishly difficult.
Is there any reason the DM of one adventure couldn't easily be a player in another?
DMs would have access to the wiki holding all of that secret DM information that the players can't see.
This problem has been on my mind since we started talking about the project. I don't like that DMing can have such severe effect on the possibilities of the individual. What if someone DMs early on and then realizes they'd really rather play? They're just fucked?
I don't have a solution right now, but I firmly believe it's unreasonable to not let someone play if they have DMed.
It would work well for me to setup an adventure, grab players from the pool, and then run through it and have no obligations to continue on immediately again.