D&D 5E Collaborative adventure creation?

[SheckyS]

Hi all,

I'm an experienced role-player and DM with older versions of D&D and I've just recently started playing D&D 5e on Fantasy Grounds after a 20-year hiatus.

I really enjoy creating my own worlds and adventures (as opposed to using pre-made modules). But I often find myself getting stuck and wishing I had someone to run ideas by.

Pixar and all the big movie studios always have lots of writers for each project, not one single person who creates the whole thing. So I'm thinking that a team of DMs could create a much better adventure than a single person could.

Does anyone know of any groups that get together and discuss story ideas or create adventures collaboratively? If not, would anyone be interested in starting up such a group?

 

[sleypy]

There use to be subforums on the wizard site before it went away. I couldn't find one on ENWorld, but if one does/doesn't exist, I would be interested in it.

 

[BoldItalic]

I'd be willing to contribute. How would it be organized?

 

[Fralex]

Oh! I helped out in one of those on the old Wizards forums. I saved the thread because I really loved the world we built. If you want to have a look at how it was done, I put it here: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...-Collaborative-Campaign-Project!-Get-Creative!

 

[Valmarius]

As far as world-building goes, I've had success using the game Microscope to let the whole group contribute. Just be prepared for some real curve-balls.
I really enjoy it though, because it sparkes a lot of new ideas that I definitely wouldn't come up with by myself.

 

[Miladoon]

I am up for some collab.

I prefer putting the setting together on a dedicated pbp forum and setting up a roll20 schedule to talk and playtest also.

I can do GIMP so mapping is not an issue.

 

[BoldItalic]

How about we create a group here on ENWorld and throw some ideas around?

 

[SheckyS]

I'm kinda new to ENWorld, also. Do they have groups on here? That seems like it would be useful.
As for how to organize it, there used to be a weekly group meeting on AOL many years ago where a bunch of people would get together and create new monsters. One person would run it, sort've like an improv group and ask people for ideas. People would raise a bunch of ideas and the moderator would pick one and then it would go from there. Then we would decide hit dice and ac and abilities and such as a group.

So I imagine you could do a campaign like that. A bunch of people just get together, one person moderates and starts off with... okay.... what's the campaign this week? Anyone got ideas? A bunch of people throw out ideas, the moderator picks one (or maybe the group votes), and then we go from there. What's the basic story? What's the player hook? What kind of NPC's are involved? What kind of monsters?

What prompted this post for me was that I have a sort've basic, incomplete idea for a story, but it lacks some very important details, like how to hook the characters into the story and what kind of clues they follow. I could come up with some really lame ones, but I thought opening it up to other people with different perspectives would be really helpful.

I suppose, in theory, the whole thing could be done on a forum thread, but it would be hard to keep it organized and moving along. It would be better to have a chat room or even a Skype chat or something like that.

 

[SheckyS]

I am up for some collab.

I prefer putting the setting together on a dedicated pbp forum and setting up a roll20 schedule to talk and playtest also.

I can do GIMP so mapping is not an issue.

I've been really struggling with maps. I just bought Campaign Cartographer, but the learning curve is pretty brutal. Is GIMP better for mapping?

 

[Miladoon]

I haven't used cc3. GIMP is very similar to photoshop and is used frequently over at the cartographer's guild. You can get a lot more info about map making from them.

Link to Cartographer's guild

Link to a Collab effort at Myth-Weavers

I have Photoshop CS5 and GIMP 2.8 for my mac and I use the GIMP most. I know it better.