3.5 Campaign designed for Two Groups

[Reegs]

Does anybody know of a D&D 3.5 campaign that is designed to be taken up by two groups simultaneously? We have a large group (8-9 players and 2 DMs) and we would like to split into 2 groups of 4 or 5 and run a campaign where the two smaller groups work together towards a common goal. One of the DMs thinks he heard of one that took place in or around Waterdeep.

[kjones]

I'm not sure that there exist any pre-written campaigns that do this, but I've run a campaign of my own that did this - PM me for details if you're interested.

I also don't think it would be too difficult, in some campaigns, to split them up between two parties, and just send them in different directions. For example, I'm currently running The Red Hand of Doom, and it wouldn't be hard to have two parties both playing simultaneously - you'd probably want to add some areas of your own, though, since two parties will devour the printed content twice as fast.

The thing you have to be careful about is timelines - the groups have to stay in sync. Otherwise, consider the following:

• Group A is ahead of Group B by a few days.

• Group A crosses a bridge to go fight a dragon.

• Group B destroys the bridge in the next session, before Group A crossed it.

The best way to deal with this is to make sure the parties can't interfere with one another.

[Lorn]

Maybe send them on different adventures in different places but working towards a common goal? Say, meet up as a huge group every couple of weeks depending on the size and length of individual missions or whatever, form a team after that (not necessarily the same one each time - spice things up a bit!) and so on. Have a couple of huge-adventuring-party things to keep a sense of cohesion in, and so on.

Basically, this hopefully ensures that you won't end up causing one of them to take all the glory, or mess things up for the other.

[Pirate_King]

I actually think it's more fun to run groups against each other. One doesn't necessarily have to be evil for them to be opposed, but that's how the GM ran it in my first campaign ever. It was a fun dynamic. We only encounter each other when we could all meet at the same time, aside from that, each session was more or less based on the success of the other group in their last session; the goal was for either given group to take control over a number of minor artifacts to cause/prevent a terrible event from taking place.

[Samakain]

I ran a campaign with a buddy of mine like this.

We just finished playing suikoden 2 :P so we wrote a campaign based around taking down an evil emperor by throwing his empire into rebellion. The party where key figures in the rebellion and the "adventures" where mainly securing allies or resources for the rebellion. Each group fought in particular battles against the empires army at different points.

Having each groups actions affect each other is vitally important. makes them feel linked even if there not even at the same session. Some of the most memorable moments in that campaign came when the two groups came together to kick some ass.

9 level 18's against an ancient red was one hell of a fight. and the argument over who got to wear which bits afterwards was also hilarious.

We put both parties through some rough encounters near the end, but they pulled through and eventually met, in front of an army, outside the capital city. That was one of the few moments i was ever proud to DM and the first time i've ever seen a group of adults ever issue a battecry XD

Basically if your running 2 groups, take advantage of the situation, use some of the message carrying spells or devices which are hardly ever used and let the two parties communicate, use this communication to drive one party one way, the other party another etc. Hell let them send items to one another if they feel like it, and most of all bring them together occasionally to whip some ass for some good group unity.

[Michaelos]

I'm not sure that there exist any pre-written campaigns that do this, but I've run a campaign of my own that did this - PM me for details if you're interested.

I also don't think it would be too difficult, in some campaigns, to split them up between two parties, and just send them in different directions. For example, I'm currently running The Red Hand of Doom, and it wouldn't be hard to have two parties both playing simultaneously - you'd probably want to add some areas of your own, though, since two parties will devour the printed content twice as fast.

The thing you have to be careful about is timelines - the groups have to stay in sync. Otherwise, consider the following:

• Group A is ahead of Group B by a few days.

• Group A crosses a bridge to go fight a dragon.

• Group B destroys the bridge in the next session, before Group A crossed it.

The best way to deal with this is to make sure the parties can't interfere with one another.

I introduced bizzare time distortion into my campaign as a plot point to handle all discrepancies like this. I don't know what I'm going to do when the Party finds out what is generating them. Probably generate an even bigger sealed monster with even more time abilities.