Living campaigns, aka what have I gotten myself into

[Crake]

Ok, so I've been toying with the idea of running a living city game for a while now, and I've been slowing assembling the pieces I think I'll need to get it done. Anyone out there have any pointers for running something as ambitious as this? I made this (http://goo.gl/iJVS6M) document for new players, outlining how I intend to run the game. I'm thinking of starting with 15-20 players, being run over multiple sessions, the groups being formed on the fly between players who take on the same/overlapping missions, or who's personal course of play makes them run into each other, or possibly even via faction vs faction discourse. Am I being too ambitious with this? Any other living campaign DMs out there with tips for me?

Edit: I should probably make it clear that this isn't an advertisement for the game, as it's not gonna be played over the internet, but instead a face to face game. This is a "help me, ohgod" thread.

[Crake]

Nobody really wants to touch this topic, huh?

[HaikenEdge]

I used to run a "living" campaign world which responded to everything my players did, often in ways they did not expect. To facilitate this, I wrote out the entire campaign setting's major political, religious and social factions, from their headquarters to their significant members to their agendas, then proceeded to build the game world around these factions, determining the political, religious and social climate of each region. I also wrote the backstory of the world, so the players could, if they were so inclined, discover what had come before their characters.

Once I set up the game world, I pretty much DMed off the cuff, which itself is based heavily on having a lot of books available and the willingness to just make stuff up as you go. Whatever the players wanted to do, that was what they did, and the living world responded to them like they were really there, instead of having a preset plot line.

Basically, in my experience, it's better to focus on the players and what they want to do, and then build out around them. Be willing to change the world when your players do something awesome that would shift the balance of power in-game; for example, I had players who, in the first 72-hours of in-game time, wipe out the thieves' guild controlling a large city and set up their own criminal organization when they discovered there was disharmony within the guild's ranks and decided to take advantage of it. Nothing in a living campaign is written in stone, except for the past, and even that can be rewritten by a character with a high enough Diplomacy, Bluff or Perform (Storytelling) check.

Don't get too attached to anything; in a living world, the players can and sometimes will run wild, so a character you thought would be a recurring enemy might end up getting squashed during the first encounter. Rather than seeing it as a setback, take it as an opportunity for the world to react to the players; if the victim was part of a faction, there's absolutely no reason why the faction couldn't or wouldn't marshal their forces to take on the players.

15-20 player characters is basically a small army, particularly given the way the power curve scales at the later levels. Kingdoms will rise and fall at your players' whims, and the fun of the living campaign is to accept that and enjoy the way your players decide they want to do business in the world.

[A.A.King]

I don't think it's not that people don't want to, it's just that it's a difficult thing to comment on. Because to the inexperienced ear (the one who's about to give his 2p) it sounds rather ambitious.

The idea to having to manage 15 people at once, when the session is an open invitation to all players and the smallest amount of all players comes, it sounds like a hell to play. This is obvious the worst case scenario but I can't help but think that at eventually a lot of the 15-20 will know each other, might have a favour the can cash in or something. And probably sooner rather then later it seems you'd find yourself in a situation were a player just sees interacting with another player as the best action for his character, only being hindered by the fact that he or she isn't normally a part of that session. Someone's the captain of the guard and needs to have someone killed, and all of a sudden he remembers that a different player who has proven himself a great killer still owes him for god knows what, you can't remember every tiny detail of 15-20 players. You however didn't invite this player because he probably wasn't going to have anything to do with those people. What you gonna do?

It might be a weird situation but I hope it shows what I think is ambitious about a living world campaign, you either have too many people to DM at once (a more obvious problem) or players just have to interact with other players from their character's point of view and they can't.

[Madwand99]

HaikenEdge, what you are talking about is a "sandbox" campaign, which is an entirely different thing than a "Living" campaign.

I have a lot of experience with Living Greyhawk (https://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=lg/welcome). Pathfinder Society (http://paizo.com/pathfinderSociety) is probably the closest modern counterpart.

In general, I find that running a Living campaign is a lot of work and requires several GMs to cooperate to make it work. Your best bet is to try Pathfinder Society. If you really want to go it alone, you need a campaign document (which you already have) which sets out the rules. I personally really like the LGCS (https://www.wizards.com/rpga/downloads/LGCS_597_v7-5.zip). You can also find all the Living Greyhawk modules if you look hard enough. They were really enjoyable.

[HaikenEdge]

HaikenEdge, what you are talking about is a "sandbox" campaign, which is an entirely different thing than a "Living" campaign.

I actually read the design document the original poster linked to, which included this:


The game will be run as a sandbox cityscape game

[Crake]

I used to run a "living" campaign world which responded to everything my players did, often in ways they did not expect. To facilitate this, I wrote out the entire campaign setting's major political, religious and social factions, from their headquarters to their significant members to their agendas, then proceeded to build the game world around these factions, determining the political, religious and social climate of each region. I also wrote the backstory of the world, so the players could, if they were so inclined, discover what had come before their characters.

Once I set up the game world, I pretty much DMed off the cuff, which itself is based heavily on having a lot of books available and the willingness to just make stuff up as you go. Whatever the players wanted to do, that was what they did, and the living world responded to them like they were really there, instead of having a preset plot line.

Basically, in my experience, it's better to focus on the players and what they want to do, and then build out around them. Be willing to change the world when your players do something awesome that would shift the balance of power in-game; for example, I had players who, in the first 72-hours of in-game time, wipe out the thieves' guild controlling a large city and set up their own criminal organization when they discovered there was disharmony within the guild's ranks and decided to take advantage of it. Nothing in a living campaign is written in stone, except for the past, and even that can be rewritten by a character with a high enough Diplomacy, Bluff or Perform (Storytelling) check.

Don't get too attached to anything; in a living world, the players can and sometimes will run wild, so a character you thought would be a recurring enemy might end up getting squashed during the first encounter. Rather than seeing it as a setback, take it as an opportunity for the world to react to the players; if the victim was part of a faction, there's absolutely no reason why the faction couldn't or wouldn't marshal their forces to take on the players.

15-20 player characters is basically a small army, particularly given the way the power curve scales at the later levels. Kingdoms will rise and fall at your players' whims, and the fun of the living campaign is to accept that and enjoy the way your players decide they want to do business in the world.

I've got a little bit of experience in running a sandbox game, and I definitely know how to run with the flow of the characters, my previous game (set in the same homebrew setting) has some pretty crazy turns that I would have never seen coming.

As for history, I've been working on that quite a bit, for a decent while now as well, don't mistake the short history overview in the document for anything even close to comprehensive, that is simply the common knowledge history that the players would be aware of, simply by living in the city.


HaikenEdge, what you are talking about is a "sandbox" campaign, which is an entirely different thing than a "Living" campaign.

I have a lot of experience with Living Greyhawk (https://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=lg/welcome). Pathfinder Society (http://paizo.com/pathfinderSociety) is probably the closest modern counterpart.

In general, I find that running a Living campaign is a lot of work and requires several GMs to cooperate to make it work. Your best bet is to try Pathfinder Society. If you really want to go it alone, you need a campaign document (which you already have) which sets out the rules. I personally really like the LGCS (https://www.wizards.com/rpga/downloads/LGCS_597_v7-5.zip). You can also find all the Living Greyhawk modules if you look hard enough. They were really enjoyable.

I'm not particularly averse to having multiple GMs, at least once I get the game established, but what I do very much want is to run the game in my homebrew setting, as it is something I've put quite a lot of effort into, and I'd like to share it with as many people as I can. I have actually considered spreading the game out quite a bit, depending on how much time I have, and how successfully I can delegate GMing to others, but that'll be further down the track. I'd like to think of this as a beta test for my homebrew setting.


I don't think it's not that people don't want to, it's just that it's a difficult thing to comment on. Because to the inexperienced ear (the one who's about to give his 2p) it sounds rather ambitious.

The idea to having to manage 15 people at once, when the session is an open invitation to all players and the smallest amount of all players comes, it sounds like a hell to play. This is obvious the worst case scenario but I can't help but think that at eventually a lot of the 15-20 will know each other, might have a favour the can cash in or something. And probably sooner rather then later it seems you'd find yourself in a situation were a player just sees interacting with another player as the best action for his character, only being hindered by the fact that he or she isn't normally a part of that session. Someone's the captain of the guard and needs to have someone killed, and all of a sudden he remembers that a different player who has proven himself a great killer still owes him for god knows what, you can't remember every tiny detail of 15-20 players. You however didn't invite this player because he probably wasn't going to have anything to do with those people. What you gonna do?

It might be a weird situation but I hope it shows what I think is ambitious about a living world campaign, you either have too many people to DM at once (a more obvious problem) or players just have to interact with other players from their character's point of view and they can't.

Hmm, for situations like this, I would likely call the player in question, ask them if they're willing to come in on short notice, or, if for example, they just need to lend a character some gear, or a non-dangerous service, just call them and get their approval or disapproval. Worst case scenario, the player's character may just be not at home, and thus unreachable (until players get sending, but thats a fair way down the track, at least for now)

I would probably limit the open sessions to first come first serve, to limit the number of players at the table, essentially the guy hiring the players only needs say, 4-6 people, so he's not gonna keep hiring after he reaches that point (because he'd be out of money to pay the others)

[A.A.King]

That might work, calling them, but it's also a bit of a timeline problem. I'm guessing that you might have 3 groups all living the same day in 3 sessions which would make interaction impossible, you wouldn't know what someone was doing

[Glimbur]

I've seen something similar done with a group on a college campus. Everyone was the same level with WBL, and people offered to DM games as they saw fit. There was a group of DM's running the meta-plot, but the interesting thing was that the 'hub' was sort of between dimensions, so you could step through a random portal and show up in any DM's adventure. That worked tolerably; some people gave out too much or too little or unique loot but it was interesting.

I've also been part of a 3-4 DM group that ran for two sets of 6 players each, in the same world. We steered them to different parts of the world, so they didn't interact much. Multiple DM's can work; one person handles the role-play with another throwing together stats for the dragon the PC's suddenly decided to go visit. Or one DM is the judge, and another is one of the lawyers. You have to be good about working with each other, but it can work.

I agree that you don't want to get too invested in one particular plot arc. Have people in the world that are plotting things, maybe a natural disaster will happen at a certain time, that sort of thing. But the PC's will do what PC's do, which is whatever you didn't expect.

[Bullet06320]

ive played in a couple LARP vampire games, with upwards of 80 people playing at the same time, having assistants, helps a lot. in this case there was an assistant storyteller incharge of each clan, to help breakdown the work load, so in your case, I would assign different factions, or organasation to assistants, or different city wards as a way to help with your work load
keeping good records helps, have a separate file on each character will help, and a published guidebook to your worlds rules, any house rules, books allowed/disallowed, banned stuff, clarifications etc, distributed to each player.
also setting aside an hour or so at the beginning of each session for character check in, allows for updating sheets, giving out info the characters mite have done inbetween sessions.
and with a large group, u would need a staff meeting inbetween sessions, so u could update records, plan new plot etc.
I hope some of this helps

[Crake]

I've started a related thread regarding the full arcane casters for this world, it can be found here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=16515591#post16515591), I'd greatly appreciate some input from you guys about it.

[ngilop]

Im confused as to what a living campaign is... at first i thought you meant face tof ace with living peopel then i read it and was liek ' oh its just a game wher eyou have 20 people at a time?"

[Crake]

Im confused as to what a living campaign is... at first i thought you meant face tof ace with living peopel then i read it and was liek ' oh its just a game wher eyou have 20 people at a time?"

Its a game that runs over multiple groups with persistent characters and plenty of crossover, to put in very simple terms. Also lol, not a chance I'd run all 20 at the same time, that would cause game play to grind to a staggering halt. The 20 people would be split up into smaller groups who each do their own thing, groups can dissolve and form over time as people's interests and goals clash or coincide.

[ngilop]

Oh..

So its exactly the same thing as a normal campaign but you have so many players that you need to break them up into smaller groups so it don't get too hectic?

[Crake]

Oh..

So its exactly the same thing as a normal campaign but you have so many players that you need to break them up into smaller groups so it don't get too hectic?

Yeah, it's pretty much that.