All My Games Play the Same
Written by Tyson J. Hayes on 2010/01/26 – 00:00 -
Every game I participate in is connected.
Every game, it doesn’t matter if I’m the one running it, or if I’m just playing in it. All of the worlds and characters are connected on a deeper level. You may be wondering why I would do such a thing. Why would I try to fit all of my worlds together in some sort of cohesive narrative? Simple, I firmly believe in collaboratively telling a story (even if it is a myth).
I Can’t Think of Everything
I’m good at some things but not others, so I need to focus on the parts that I’m good at and slowly build my skills where I’m weak. Using the best of all the GM’s I play under and what I’m coming up with myself makes for some the easiest world building as I’m already borrowing from what’s there. It’s like using a pre-built adventure and modifying it to your taste, except everything your creating is home brewed.
The Players Love It
My players love having the chance to rub elbows with their previous incarnations, and love that their characters are still in the world adventuring. It helps create a more living world that’s evolving and changing as the games progress. It also allows them to see the results of their actions. Completing one campaign where they save a village can result in another campaign starting (with different characters) from that village remembering the previous characters as heroes of the story.
To allow every game to be connected allows me to quickly and easily craft together world history and back story for my campaigns; it also allows me to do crazy things with the worlds that may not be normally possible. It’s fueled almost every campaign I’ve run for the last five years and only continues to grow the more work I put into it.
Have you tried to connect two campaigns? How successful where you?
Tags: campaign planning, characters, story telling, tyson j. hayes
Categories: Game Masters |
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By Spyder Z on Jan 26, 2010 | Reply
My game was actually designed around the interconnectivity between realities. So combining campaigns was par for the course. :P An interesting extension of an old character into a new game was the resurrection of one of my players old characters.
His new character was interested in the power his old character had amassed (He played a similar line of characters, and ended up running across the story of his old characters demise). As a player he had assumed that the old character would “Of course” be completely willing to “Hand Over” his power, and was surprised to discover his character continuing on his quest for power once he was resurrected. The interaction between that character and his new one was rather fun. (And he had to admit that it was “True to Character”. ;P )
By kmpervm on Jan 26, 2010 | Reply
That's what Plane Scape is for! ;-)
By Tyson J. Hayes on Jan 27, 2010 | Reply
Yes, well it does make things easy that is for sure. :D
By Tyson J. Hayes on Jan 27, 2010 | Reply
It's always my concern when I run the characters is trying to make sure I run true to what the player has on file. I'm looking into Obsidian Portal to create a repository for all of our campaign information so I can make sure I'm staying true to any events or characters.
By Tyson J. Hayes on Jan 27, 2010 | Reply
Yes, well it does make things easy that is for sure. :D
By Tyson J. Hayes on Jan 27, 2010 | Reply
It's always my concern when I run the characters is trying to make sure I run true to what the player has on file. I'm looking into Obsidian Portal to create a repository for all of our campaign information so I can make sure I'm staying true to any events or characters.