Mass play, and perhaps a campaign??

[Loremaster Telvlon]

Hey everybody,


I wanted to gauge the community's thoughts on Mass Play. Well, what I mean by that is actually something along the lines of West Marches style. And if you don't know what the west Marches is, it's essentially a prescription of D&D that breaks the notion of game night, and gets a whole bunch of people to play the same campaign by forming their own parties, mix-matching every week, and so on.


But really, I wanted to discuss what an MMO-type factor might mean to D&D. I like to use Elder Scrolls Online as my platform for comparisons, mostly cause' I think it's great, but also because I think its social interactions are superb.

There is something to be said about an "adventurer" who becomes part of a larger group of adventurers, and they all go on different quests, making friends (or not), and having great times within their own littler in-game community. Building themselves up, and maybe after awhile, they're pretty powerful, and new recruits join up, and so on.

And it becomes this sort of never ending adventure. Which to me is pretty cool. I like the notion of building this sort of "guild" from nothing, it breaks away from the "party of 4" in a way. While it may still be a party of 4, it can be any four on any night at any point during the week, not the same four on the same night every week. There's a shift in focus from one group of people, to a collection of people doing a number of different things, which I find pretty neat.

And the quests they do, are NOT the DMs, he might give them a choice based on what the "guild" may need done, or some contracts they've received, and they go and do it. DM doesn't have to wonder if he/she is making the story good, because the Players are choosing their story, and who they want to partake in it with.

 

[Lanefan]

Er...is this intended to be an online game, or around one-or-more real table(s)?

If live around tables and you've got a big enough gaming community to pull it off, this could seriously rock; and were it happening in my town I might well try to join in. (though I'm dubious about some elements of your campaign idea at the end of your post, particularly where the players don't roll up their own characters...I don't think that'll fly)

If it's online...meh, sorry. Not interested.

Lanefan

 

[cmad1977]

. HOWEVER, it is me, the DM who gets to role their Class, their Race, and where their initial loyalties lie.

So, you have an ambitious idea. Lots of passion. That's great. The problem for me is that I for one, and I think an awful lot of players, rather like creating their own character. Taking that away from them right at the start is something I can't get behind. For that reason...I'm out.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[ccs]

Is this the sales pitch for World of Warcraft?

 

[Jhaelen]

Doesn't appeal to me at all.

 

[Blue]

It looks like there's been some editing, removing stuff about DM controlling character creation. I can't see what it is, I'm just addressing this as it is now.

This sounds a bit like the first long-term campaign I was in, or rather what it grew into. Well, partially, and I'll get to the differences.

While I had played red box Basic & Expert, my first multi-year D&D campaign was later in the AD&D era. I joined a game that had already been running in the Forgotten Realms, which had the concept of "Adventuring Company Charters" which were expensive and hard to get to. The original group, now mid-to-high level (name level, around 9th, but advancement slowed WAY down there so it would be forever going up each level from there.)

Anyway, they decided to fund new groups under the aegis of their charter, becoming "The Company of the Unicorn: The 'Adventuring Company' Company" and started up a new group, with some of the original players and some new players including me.

Now, you're describing was pure sandbox, and we weren't quite that. The DM would have plots that we could follow up or not, usually more then we could handle at any particular point. But the plots that we didn't follow up on would advance. Maybe others dealt with it, or maybe it got worse. Plus there would be DM-imposed plots like enemies of the founders coming after us, or a war that broke out affecting us all. The world was very rich.

See, the DM also ran other groups in different parts of the same world. And ripples from adventures we did (and didn't) do would spread to the other groups. And then there was also that some players were also in some of the other groups. Lots of cross-pollination. And then we got to the point where the main all-day-Saturday group would have several simultaneous campaigns going on in different places in the Realms depending on which players showed up. "No Dave? We can play the Dwarves." And of course these all cross-pollinated as well, characters ending up in different groups as well as splitting up and making new ones. (AD&D & AD&D 2nd were a lot more forgiving about adventuring with different level characters in the party. Heck, the different classes didn't even have the same XP charts.)

But as we all got to higher levels teleportation magic and other ways of communicating and covering distances became easy. The Company of the Unicorn had fame across multiple nations and most groups had either someone who once was in it, or had adventured alongside members. We ended up being a huge pool of characters that would mix and match based on interests or location. The DM would feed us hooks for adventures but half the time we'd be like "we want to go follow that treasure map we found a bunch of sessions ago" or "We want to go back to Myth Drannor and kill demons."

So we weren't pure sandbox but we were more self-directing then not, and it grew a lot more organically then you are putting forth, but it shares enough similarities.

And for something even more crazy, me and many of those players (and the DM) were in a Champions superhero game where everyone had as many characters as they liked, across a bunch of groups that often worked at cross purposes, and people were also free to create vigilantes and _villains_. I swear that well over half the plots and 99% of the drama came from character inspired plots. It was glorious, but I have no idea how the DM kept it all clear. It might have been more of a grab the tiger by the tail and hold on for the ride.

My current campaign (3 years and going) and last two (12 years between them) have really been high-mythic, travelogue, high RP, shades of grey campaigns. I've strongly considered my next as a riff on the megadungeon for a change of pace, a real grind where each player gets a stable of three characters and the non-active ones get half XP from whoever you are playing. The setting would be a non-euclidian tower that opens up (briefly and unpredicably) on various planes and everyone there are refugees from planes that Darkness has overtaken - as it seems to be in the process of taking over every plane. Adventures would be choices from where the portals are open right now with a faction-filled but resource-starved home base of the tower which has it's own mysteries. So while it adventure choices would be limited to the currently open portal (to contain my prep needs), t would be a rotating roster, each that also has their own goals and needs on these trips.

 

[aramis erak]

Sounds like Adventurer's League or Pathfinder Society with fewer choices...

Which basically sounds dreadful.

 

[Imaculata]

If you are going to run multiple groups at the same time, with multiple DM's, within the same world, then that is about as close as you can probably get to an MMO.

What is most interesting I think, is if the outcomes of the various quests can affect each other. That is one thing that real MMO's can't (or have so far been unable to) really do. So for example, one group completes a quest, and the outcome of that quest may affect the events that another group experiences later on.

 

[DM Howard]

Something lime this would be pretty interesting if you were able to achieve critical mass in terms of players and DMs. I think the real crux would be getting everyone to agree on what system to use!

 

[aramis erak]

If you are going to run multiple groups at the same time, with multiple DM's, within the same world, then that is about as close as you can probably get to an MMO.

What is most interesting I think, is if the outcomes of the various quests can affect each other. That is one thing that real MMO's can't (or have so far been unable to) really do. So for example, one group completes a quest, and the outcome of that quest may affect the events that another group experiences later on.

BSG Online did.
From what I hear, EVE Online does.
If one counts Second Life as an MMO, it does, too...
Puzzle Pirates also does; almost all the shops are built by players, and most ships are run by players.