All My Games Play the Same

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?