Help me come up with a campaign

[Yair]

My current group just can't seem to meet regularly, which has brought my current campaign to a halt. So I'm looking to start an "alternative" game, that we'll be able to play even when short a few men. The main point of the setup has to be that characters can easily "disappear" or "reappear" in the scene as player composition changes from session to session.
I'm open for any idea that could accomodate that. (I currently own mostly only D&D and Ars Magica products, though, and would like to avoid a steep learning curve...)

The only thing I could think of right now is a series of arena-matches... which doesn't sound very exciting.

Thanks!

 

[Nifft]

Do a Law-n-Order type thing. They're in a city (CSI:Sharn? CSI:Waterdeep? heck, CSI:Sigil!) so they can gain & lose PCs as you need. You can also leverage the fact that they're not tied to these PCs, and simply hand out pre-gen PCs for any given "mission".

Think episodic, and don't be afraid to clue-railroad.

-- N

 

[Gospog]

Every month, the King gathers his loyal Knights (or troubleshooters, heroes, whatever) together and asigned them a perilous task.

The line-up can change from game to game, representing what heroes are availible that time.

Make them episodic one-shots, with recurring NPCs and sub-plots for the players who show up consistently.

Good luck.

-Tom

 

[BiggusGeekus]

You might need a stargate.

The first adventure could uncover a teleportation dealie-wacker that transports people quickly, but innacurately. So you can't plop down in the middle of the bad guy's living room, but you can get within 2 miles of it. The gate can only be reactivated from the point of origin and the NPCs will do so at regular intervals.

This will extend the range of your adventures, which is good. It will also encourage Stargate jokes, which is annoying.

You can dress the stargate up a bit to make it look less stargate-y. You can make it a druid's grove that have the PCs wander into the forest and emerge at the desired locale or whatever. Or make it a flying carpet that needs to return to the point of origin for some reason or another (maybe to be recharaged)

Hope this helps!

 

[JoeGKushner]

Stargate

Planescape

Ravenloft

Spelljammer

Dungeon World

Infinite Worlds (GURPS)

Anything where characters can move between areas. Have a patron who is capable of manipulating time/space and moving them around is another good solution.

 

[JimAde]

These are all good suggestions. You could be even more heavy-handed, though, and do a Sliders rip-off. The PCs are all in (ready for this) a TAVERN! But it's not just any tavern, it's the World Serpent Inn (available as a free PDF from the Wizards site). It's a pocket-plane that connects to lots of others. The PCs leave the inn (which they then can't get back to) run into the adventure of the week, then at the end they find the inn again. Next time it's a slightly different set of inn patrons who find a door out together.

Overall, they could be looking for a way home, questiong for some particular "dealie-wacker" (great word, BG) or whatever.

 

[Storm Raven]

My current group just can't seem to meet regularly, which has brought my current campaign to a halt. So I'm looking to start an "alternative" game, that we'll be able to play even when short a few men. The main point of the setup has to be that characters can easily "disappear" or "reappear" in the scene as player composition changes from session to session.

Curse them with an artifact. The artifact has no known purpose, and cannot be destroyed or gotten rid of. All it does is "randomly" suck those who are cursed with it into itself to hold them in stasis, and "randomly" spit them out again. Any time a player doesn't show up, his character is sucked into the artifact, and when he comes again, his character is spit out.

 

[Yair]

Curse them with an artifact. The artifact has no known purpose, and cannot be destroyed or gotten rid of. All it does is "randomly" suck those who are cursed with it into itself to hold them in stasis, and "randomly" spit them out again. Any time a player doesn't show up, his character is sucked into the artifact, and when he comes again, his character is spit out.

Heh. They just found one artifact, so finding another is really stretching it. (They won't get to keep the one they found, unless they really surprise me, but still.)

Great suggestions everyone, keep them coming