Many Campaigns, One Finale?

[Nellisir]

Have you ever run a series of short campaigns, with different characters, that led up to a single campaign against the true mastermind?
If so, how did it go? Did the player's know what was going on before the end?

I've been considering running something like this -- a few short (say, 3-4 month) campaigns, to "explore different ideas" in the same setting, and then cap it off with a campaign taking characters from each of earlier campaigns and sending them against a master villain. Just the look on the players' faces when they get all the pieces together seems like it would be priceless.

Cheers
Nell

 

[Psion]

Sounds cool to me. I have a few players who like to try different character concepts. Such a campaign would let them try out a few, and then take their favorite into the "final round."

 

[Goblyns Hoard]

Sounds like a great idea. I did start to run a more basic version of that once - it was in WoD and the idea was just to play a bunch of games that each lasted no more than 3 sessions in order to fully populate the city and see all the different sides of it. I also wanted to use it to see some of the variety that you could produce within a 'group, so each game the characters had to come from the same clan/tribe/tradition. We ran 3 vampire games (Brujah, Nos and Toreador) and one werewolf (BoneGnawer) before the thing fell apart. I was never really looking to tie the whole thing together at any point just wanted to get a really goof grip on the setting.

The main issues I had were the fact that players were in a position where they could reasonably expect their previous characters to possibly be involved - and that would be the only advice I can offer. Make sure that in the early sessions there's no way that the PCs in one of the campaigns runs in the same circle as one from another campaign, or at least that the players know they can't come into contact with their other characters so not to even try and bother. And I'd also recommend you keep copious notes on all sessions so that the implications of one campaign's activities tally with those of the next campaign.

 

[francisca]

That would be very cool. Wish I were DM enough to pull it off.

 

[diaglo]

ran two different groups of my friends. one from school.... (i was in the geek/nerd/brain/egghead classes) and one from around my neighborhood.

the school group i ran at lunch and during study hall.

the hood group i ran at my house.

after several years, i finally got to run them up against each other.

each party on a quest after an item in a dungeon of a mad dead wizard...

they were competing for the same item.

and got there at the same time almost.

battle royale.

whole lotta fun. but definitely two different approaches.

 

[the Jester]

Ooh, I love it! Gonna have to try that out...

 

[Zephrin the Lost]

Ha!



I have plans to do something like this right now: my group will play through the same period of time my homegrown world twice, using two different sets of characters, with the end result of the 2nd team fighting an epic-save-the-world-battle trhat the first team did a lot to make possible.



A calendar is key, because the two teams of characters will visit various locations at different times, and the players will get to see results of their actions when they had first come to a location while playing the first group of characters.



Unfortunately, given lack of game-time due to real life responsibilities, at times it seems like this will always be just a plan.

 

[Brain]

Ooh, I love it! Gonna have to try that out...

uh oh.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

(edited out font color)

Ha!

I have plans to do something like this right now: my group will play through the same period of time my homegrown world twice, using two different sets of characters, with the end result of the 2nd team fighting an epic-save-the-world-battle trhat the first team did a lot to make possible.

A calendar is key, because the two teams of characters will visit various locations at different times, and the players will get to see results of their actions when they had first come to a location while playing the first group of characters.

That's funny. A buddy of mine had a very similar idea for his game. There were two campaigns being run simultaniously in two different timelines.

Unfortunately, given lack of game-time due to real life responsibilities, at times it seems like this will always be just a plan. [/color]

[/color]

This is exactly what happened with us. Running two games that are interdependant on each other is hard.

 

[Gwaihir]

We had a situation once where I concluded two campaigns simultaneously. The first campaign was a 2E campaign about 3 years running in which I was a player, that was left hanging when we all took a 1 year hiatus when I started to travel for Business.
The second was a 2 year campaign I DMed that we fired up when 3e came out, with all the same players less the DM from the first campaign.

The first campaign pivoted around a big bad orb, the relic of an evil God that the party had to destroy. The second campaign, set in a completely different world, revolved around a PC mages quest for glory against a group of other mages. Eventually I strung the two togther so that the first campaigns group was working "against" the second group to recover the Orb, Then they had to work together, running both their characters, to destroy it. The look on the players faces when they realized that the competition was their own previous characters is one on my highlights of DMing.

I ended the campaign by having them shot into the Astral plane upon destruction of the orb. They were eventually called back to reality by a very old man on a hill with acncient ruins who told them:

Darn. You are not the heros I was hoping for!
My name is Merlin.
Well, Welcome to the year 1940. We have reached our darkest hour, His majesties government has need of you...

I then eplilogued that the wizard wound up working on the Manhattan Project, the Fighter died storming the beaches at Normandy etc.