The Everything Campaign

[RangerWickett]

You know how people talk about newbie DMs who run games with dragons and space marines and Dracula and Luke Skywalker fighting Neo and the Hulk? How can one run a game like that, and yet have it be serious? Because I find myself having too many ideas, and I just want to use them all at once, instead of working on a campaign with a specific feel. I want to run the Everything Campaign.

I came to this conclusion this weekend. My latest campaign, which was going to be fun and new because it mixed steamtech and magic, fell apart. The characters just weren't appropriate for any sort of heroic action, and I didn't feel like running a game where the PCs just went around pillaging. But specifically I was disappointed because I'd been planning a crossover of sorts, between this steamtech world and the fantasy setting I normally run.

Basically, while planning the steamtech game, I realized that there was enough in common with my old setting, and that the plot had enough holes that would be filled by connecting them, that I basically began brainstorming the campaign as having three stages -- Tech, Magic, and then Magitech. I was looking forward to using characters I liked from previous games, and to playing with different genres of fantasy with the same plot. But as I said, the game collapsed.

I feel that it might not be healthy to want to reuse old characters and places. It seems a little fanboyish, which is especially unhealthy since I'm being a fan of my own work. But dang if I didn't think it'd be fun to connect the 'resurrecting the eternal spirit of elemental air' from the old game with the steamtech 'doomsday golem whose mind has been hidden away' plot of the new game.

So, while trying to brainstorm a new game -- an idea the players are quite interested in, because even they admit they weren't really sure how to make an ongoing story out of their characters -- I thought that I should just let all my weird urges fit together in a game. I'm afraid it'll suck without some form of structure, though, so I'm asking you if you think it's possible or even a good idea.

My first idea is to make it meta-roleplaying. The characters start in a fantasy world and slowly run across things that are more and more atypical, slowly accumulating clues to what is going on as they try to stop various villains. Eventually the characters discover that, whoa, they're characters in some sort of story. And there'd be some sort of meta-fictive plot where they have to fight for what they value, despite realizing that their existence is just imagined.

The second idea I had was to play with plane-hopping. I prefer a fantasy game usually, and the idea of just having a setting that tries to logically combine sci-fi and fantasy and everything in between kinda doesn't click with my mind. But with the first idea I feel that it might work, since the existence of the sci-fi is fantastical, because the sci-fi itself is a dream, just like the fantasy.

The third idea is to ground it all in dreams. I'd have to cut away the sci-fi aspects, but if the game ends up drifting into a dream world the party has to find their way out of, then I can just have different dream realities manifest whenever I feel like doing something different.

Can such a game work? Is it too weird? Should I just ask the group if they want to keep going with the old game. Ah, my mind is going too many directions at once.

Thus my problem.

 

[Crothian]

THe first idea doesn't sound like an everything campaign. But it does sound like the Truth Seeker from AEG's Secrets (I think its called the truth seeker but it is in that book). It should be an easy idea to do as long as the players buy into it.

THe second one can work too. With plane hoping you can have each plane be a different genre and offer different aspects then its the Players that do the mixing. Sci fi though isn't really fantastic unless the players never figure it out.

Dreams could work but that can get very surreal.

Mixing everything works if done right, there are more then a few different games that do this sort of thing. I've played in enough GURPS games that do.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Um ... did you ask the group what they want in a game? What did they say?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

It can work- but you need to have an RPG you're comfortable with and know well. It must also have the ability to simulate a wide variety of PC types.

What system to use:

First, best option- use something like HERO or GURPS. They are inherently set up to handle PCs of any type. Personally, I prefer HERO.

Second best option are games that have crossgenre campaigning built into them. Torg and Rifts do that, and D20- with the right supplements- can also do the job.

Third best option- use whatever system you're most familiar with and houserule everything.

Lessons learned from crossgenre gaming:

1) Realize that, because of the nature of technology, what is an appropriate foe for one PC in the party may not be appropriate for the rest of the party. An elfin archer is simply not going to have too much luck facing off against a guy who is a "Starship Trooper" wannabe (book, not the movie)- but the PC who is Superman's little brother will not be seriously challenged. Thus, the party is going to have to learn how to do things like 1) ambush opponents, 2) avoid opponents and 3) run away from opponents- not every combat situation will be one they can win.

2) The real trick for the GM is creating adventures that the superman finds challenging but it isn't lethal to the elf. Reading old issues of DC comics Justice League may help- after all, Batman and Green Arrow were part of the same group as Superman, the Martian Manhunter, and Wonder Woman- normal humans with extraordinary skills fighting alongside demigods!

How to do it:

Michael Moorcock's multiverse and the ability to plane-hop is one way. Portals, anyone?

The Rifts, Shadowrun and several other RPG campaign settings merely assume that magic and tech coexist, for a variety of reasons.

One option would be to use Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle's "Dream Park" setting. The 3 books were made into a game by R. Talsorian Games some years ago (should be available in a used game source) and also done as X-Crawl. Essentially, the gameworld is a "tomorrow" in which LARP-ing is a big-time spectator sport, and all kinds of technologies have sprung up to facilitate its play, including holography a la Star Trek's holodecks.

 

[Dwarven Godfather]

This idea is very do able, I know

There is one system that could easily work. Do you have access to the Dragonstar book(s) by Fantasy Flight Games? The first books I have picked up and don't regret getting these books and you can now get the whole system which is 6 books for $40.00 which is worth it.
Throw everything into a universe with either Starships or you could use Portals. What I do plan on doing one day is have the Dragonstar empire send in observers to a planet and observe the powers on the planet which is what they do before taking the planet. Which also could have the players witness these characters and encounter these characters which the mages have their spells stored on Data-pads and other devices which would allow you to introduce tech slowly and would be a mystery for the characters to explore even more as well. The characters could also run across a weird contraption that could be a starship, but no one knows what it is so they would have to do more research with others to find out about this contraption as well.
I keep on throwing the worlds that I get into this universe, so I don't have to be bottled down to just one world and mix it up. That is what I'm working on now for a group of characters and they are starting off as 16th characters. The start of the game is that every character is a retired adventurer that is established on one of the known worlds as they are contacted by a NPC who has been keeping tabs on these characters and is now contacting these characters to come out of Retirement to find this new menace to the universe which would allow the characters to play around with the Epic book along with letting me play around with the Epic book as well. This also would allow me to do some plane-hopping as well and would allow them to explore other known worlds as well.

 

[The Goblin King]

The second idea I had was to play with plane-hopping. I prefer a fantasy game usually, and the idea of just having a setting that tries to logically combine sci-fi and fantasy and everything in between kinda doesn't click with my mind. But with the first idea I feel that it might work, since the existence of the sci-fi is fantastical, because the sci-fi itself is a dream, just like the fantasy.

The third idea is to ground it all in dreams. I'd have to cut away the sci-fi aspects, but if the game ends up drifting into a dream world the party has to find their way out of, then I can just have different dream realities manifest whenever I feel like doing something different.

You can combine these two. What if the Plane of Dreams held the sleeping minds of not just one world but of every world? Through magic/tech the characters could enter someones dream then follow it back to the alternate material plane the dreamer is on.

 

[KenM]

As a player, one problem I would have if the DM decided to pull a Matrix type fake world thing is the same problem I had with the Matrix movies. "Gee, now that we KNOW everyting in this world is fake and can't hurt us, We'll be invencible."

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

For anyone who wants to run the 'everything campaign' (which I don't really suggest in teh first place) I can't stress enough the idea that you should start slow. Rather than throw 1st level characters into a chaotic mix, let them ease into their characters and slowly introduce them to whatever hooks and threads you want. Otherwise, I think they may get swamped with everything. Information overload.

 

[Umbran]

Can such a game work? Is it too weird? Should I just ask the group if they want to keep going with the old game. Ah, my mind is going too many directions at once.

Yes. No. Yes. Yes.

Such a game can work, but making it work well isn't easy. It isn't too weird - the problem becomes lack of thematic focus. The basic problem with using everything is that you then lose ability to look at any one thing too deeply.

"Everything games" always have an element of the silly to them, because they take much of their cool factor froom the juxtaposition of mismatched elements. If you lack internal logic, players cannot take that logic seriously. Mixing genres in a controlled way is a tool, while mixing them uncontrolledly becomes implausible, and thus slightly goofy.

Also, the game's cool factor sort of depends on what the players will think of the juxtapositions. That means to fully appreciate it, they have to be thinking out of character, which wreaks havoc on your ability to keep them immersed.

You can, however, enforce a certain level of seriousness upon it. You've hit upon the basic frameworks, but haven't thought of some of the subtleties...

The meta-fictive and dream methods share similarities (I'd almost call the dream method a sub-set of the metafictive method), but you aren't yet openign yourself up to them in fullness. You seem to still be thinking only in terms of putting a D&D character through paces that include science elements.

With dreams and computers your basis need not be psuedo-medieval heroes. They can be people of the distant future or the present. The body they work with within the dream or computer-simulated reality need not resemble the ones they use out in the "real world", and neither do the rules-set you use. You can, for example, use d20 Modern for the "base characters", and each time they dream, or jack into their computers, you can use different characters. Heck, you can use entirely different games - plane hopping through universes that use different rules. One week you play D&D, the next week Mutants and Masterminds, a third week you play White Wolf Storyteller. All you need to do is link the plot through all the games in some way.

Or, you can stick to one game system, but there's still no need to have the characters be medieval numbskulls. If you're using a dream plane or plane hopping as an element, the characters can start from anywhere in the multiverse of element sources you plan to use.

 

[The Grackle]

You know how people talk about newbie DMs who run games with dragons and space marines and Dracula and Luke Skywalker fighting Neo and the Hulk? How can one run a game like that, and yet have it be serious? Because I find myself having too many ideas, and I just want to use them all at once, instead of working on a campaign with a specific feel. I want to run the Everything Campaign....

Can such a game work? Is it too weird? Should I just ask the group if they want to keep going with the old game. Ah, my mind is going too many directions at once.

I'm a huge fan of the everything game, but it takes a lot of work. This is pretty much the only way I'll GM a game (and it's probably the reason I suffer GM burnout so much). I take everything that want, mix it together in different proportions, and stir- violently. Sometimes it turns out not-so-good, other times it comes out great.

Maybe it's personal preferrence, but I would advise against the plane wandering type campaign. It's hard enough to make the players feel like they're in a real "place" w/o changing it around every adventure. It has sort of a strobe light effect on them. The more you play in one "place" the more depth is added to that setting and the characters as they develop a relationship to/it.

As far as the dream/story reality; it already is a fantasy. It's a game. The players won't be shocked to discover that. Imply it, have it be dream-like, have stories be real, but don't break the bubble. I'd say have the world be really surreal, but demand the characters believe, and behave as if it were undeniably real. Even if you never explain how magic and tech and magitech "work," it doesn't matter as long as it seems believable in the game to the characters. They just make their repair:magitech rolls and it gets fixed.

Stick to one system you know, and let characters advance normally. Have them fight recurring Villains, and save NPCs. All the normal stuff. Have them make exactly the type of the character they are comfortable with, and want to play, and would like to play for a long time. That helps.

Any RPG is about exploring the landscape inside a GMs brain. So no matter how many random ideas you have floating around in there, they'll all have a similar "feel" to your players. It's kinda' all melted together into one whole, or one "place."

I feel like I'm not saying what I'm trying to say very well. :\ Does that make sense?