D&D General Campaign Set Ups

[WayOfTheFourElements]

Would any of the official, WotC-published modules work well with more than one group (the Living World set up, described above)?

 

[Li Shenron]

Of all these types, I'm curious why Single Group, Single DM is so much more prevalent than the others. For some reason, nearly all published adventures assume this model and it's hard to find much support for the others. Is there any particular reason why the other campaign set-ups lack the same appeal?

Because it's the option which needs only 1 DM and it is also much easier for said DM.

But you forgot to mention what is possibly the true most prevalent setup:

Single DM, no group.

 

[Shiroiken]

Rotating DMs with the same character is a nightmare for one reason: the other DM sucks. Every DM has their own style and preferences, and when the other DM does it their way (instead of the RIGHT way), it causes friction. I've seen a group try this, with one DM a Monty Haul and the other a Grinch. Those two yelled at each other a LOT between sessions. I tried very hard to help them set down ground rules to work from, but neither was willing to compromise an inch.

 

[Lanefan]

Would any of the official, WotC-published modules work well with more than one group (the Living World set up, described above)?

Only with some kitbashing; and you'd need at least two of their AP-modules.

First thing you'd have to do would be to break the published modules out into a bunch of small separate adventures. This is easy to do with Princes of the Apocalypse, possible to do with Lost Mine, and I'm not sure how easy with the others as I don't own them. But let's say it's possible with PotA and at least one other, and proceed.

If, say, you had two groups - the Friday group and the Sunday group, let's say - you could start the Friday group in the early bits of Lost Mine (leading into whatever other module you've chopped up) and the Sunday group in the early bits of PotA. Between those sites there'd be a significant town or city where both groups would naturally gravitate toward for downtime, treasury division, resupply, training, etc.; and they could meet and interact there (or, if you can swing it, have both groups start there in the first place). Characters could also be swapped out or switched between parties here if so desired.

From there, you could introduce elements in one adventure series that lead to the other and vice versa; thus the Lost Mine group might find itself needing to go to the Water dungeon in PotA while the PotA group needs to go to one of what originally would have been the other group's adventures. Toss in the occasional stand-alone adventure (you'll have to now and then, just to keep the groups aligned in time when - not if - one group gets too far ahead of/behind the other) and you're good to go.

 

[Charlaquin]

Would any of the official, WotC-published modules work well with more than one group (the Living World set up, described above)?

I think it would be pretty doable with a few of them. Tomb of Annihilation would work well because it’s a hex crawl with a meat-grinder dungeon in it. With some minor adjustments I think Curse of Strahd could work well too. Dungeon of the Mad Mage would probably work, and the premise of Dragon Heist could be really cool with several groups of PCs all racing to get to the gold first, but that would require an Alexandrian-level rewrite of the actual content.

 

[WayOfTheFourElements]

I think it would be pretty doable with a few of them. Tomb of Annihilation would work well because it’s a hex crawl with a meat-grinder dungeon in it. With some minor adjustments I think Curse of Strahd could work well too. Dungeon of the Mad Mage would probably work, and the premise of Dragon Heist could be really cool with several groups of PCs all racing to get to the gold first, but that would require an Alexandrian-level rewrite of the actual content.

Competitive Dragon Heist sounds like an excellent idea.

 

[Charlaquin]

Competitive Dragon Heist sounds like an excellent idea.

I think it would be awesome, especially if you involve all of the antagonist factions instead of just one. You’d need to heavily modify the introduction though.

 

[aco175]

I think it could work using a published module like dragon heist. One DM can run the first part in the city and another the first few levels in the dungeon. You can switch back and forth if you can trust each other.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Competitive Dragon Heist sounds like an excellent idea.

Dungeon of the Mad Mage could work, or maybe Tomb of Annihilation.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I'm lucky enough to have three DMs (including myself) in one of my groups. While I've floated the idea of running a shared campaign, the idea has never taken off.

I think it's largely because we each have our own interests and want to pursue our own experiments. That's not to say that we design campaigns without the players in mind, but rather that we each have our own styles and approaches that we're most comfortable with.

For example, my one friend enjoys running sci-fi and sci-fantasy campaigns, but doesn't generally like playing in them.

Ultimately it's easiest for each of us to do our own individual thing and just rotate DMing duties when someone finishes a campaign or their life simply becomes too hectic to DM.

That said, I do sometimes throw homages into my games from theirs. Just little inside jokes and the like. They tend to get a kick out of it.