Idea

[JoeNotCharles]

One advantage we have here is that a mega-adventure could involve the destiny of a Far Land rather than the entire setting. It could involve the downfall or transformation beyond recognition of the Kingdom of Jade or the Imperium, or the Valley of Bone, or if that's too much we could create a new Far Land just for the mega-adventure. (You know, I've owned module X4/X5 - Master of the Desert Nomads/The Temple of Death - since I was a kid, and never gotten a chance to run them because I never had a group last long enough. That would make a great Far Land adventure - the armies of a distant Republic are being overrun, but in their hour of need an explorer finds a portal to Daunton and they begin recruiting mercenaries...)

The key would be to be sure there are exit points where players and/or DM's could get out of the mega-adventure if it lasts too long.

 

[renau1g]

I'm actually playing through X4-5 here on the regular PbP boards (3.5e though) and they're great fun.

 

[Stringbean2142]

Stonegod, Covaithe, Phoenix8008, or Boddynock, can you point us in the direction of where the Living Enworld mega-adventure catastrophe is? I hunted some on my own, but without a point of reference it's looking for a needle in a haystack. I assume it's been archived at this point somewhere, but am not sure where that would be. Is it even somewhere we can still view it?

If this is something that gets attempted, it would probably be a good idea to look at what and how the other one failed. Plus, I've never seen a mega-adventure attempted before on a PbP board and am curious what the overall intention was going into it; did things in one adventure have direct, immediate effects in the others or was it a more abstract connection between the adventures, things like that.

 

[Boddynock]

Both covaithe & P8 were able to be more constructive in their comments than I was: kudos to them.

@renaug1: I'm sorry but I found that I'd finished the scotch already.

@P8: You're right, of course, that Don Incognito is already streets ahead by not attempting to run a dozen games on his own! (If only that were a joke! ) I was aware that I wasn't really adding anything new to the comments already made ... just trying to convey some of the horror of it all.

I still think, however, that PBP is better suited to smaller adventures than the grand, overarching schemes. The slow pace (even posting daily) simply makes it too hard to maintain the momentum.

@Stringbean2142: It's not really that we can point you to a single record of the difficulties the mega-adventure produced. Rather, it was the toll it took over time on a community of players who were left high and dry when the initiating DM disappeared, and the hit which LEW's creativity took because just about everybody was involved in the M-A and there was no energy or time left for the non-M-A aspects of life in LEW.

Perhaps this thread will give an indication of it. As you can see from the comments in it, LEW ran into difficulty for a number of reasons but the M-A was a not inconsiderable element of its troubles.

 

[Phoenix8008]

And here is the mega adventure council meeting which lasted 3 months just to get through the preliminaries of having a 'town hall' discussion IC about what was happening and why we needed so many groups of PC's, then sorting them all out into the various groups to be sent off to the 6 or so separate adventure threads.

HINT: If we get a mega adventure going, don't repeat that mistake. Just have the people needing the help come to the Hanged Man to recruit just like everyone else.

 

[Stringbean2142]

Thanks, both of you, for the links! It got me going in the right direction to find the rest of the threads. Now I need to lie down and let my poor, abused eyes rest after reading through them...

Still, from what I could gather it seems that what was most disastrous was that darn near everyone was involved in that one mega-adventure and so when it started to fall behind, it drained everyone just trying to keep it going. If that's the case, then what if we set limits to any possible multi-adventure plotlines? Say that no DM can have more than one adventure thread attached to a given plotline at a given time, that no more than 50% of the adventuring community can be attached to the plotline at a given time, and that no adventures are point-failure. It's not perfect, and I actually agree with Boddynock that PbP works best with smaller adventures. I think covaithe was the one who said think TV, not movies. Still, that would at least limit any problems arising from a M-A.

I know I probably wouldn't run any games under a M-A type format, and after seeing just how bad it can be, I'd probably keep my primary character out of it as well. But if it's something you would want to push for, I think it's not unreasonable to set some limits on it to protect L4W as a whole. At least that's my two cents.

 

[The Goblin King]

Simply put, I'm asking for help. At least 3 DMs (in addition to myself) will be needed.

You have my sword.

I've been thinking about war recently too. The structure of the adventures could be like a branching flowchart.

I've been pondering how to make it feel like the party is contributing without feeling like they are fighting the whole war themselves. Broad directives would be best. Things like: recon this area, take and hold this village, protect this caravan. They have an objective but are free to carry it out as they see fit.

So far it looks to me like the best plan would be to have them hire out as mercenary companies. I'm not sure if it would be best for all the parties to be squads of the same company or for each party to be an independent company.