Gentlemen, I had an idea..

[smubee]

This is just an idea that I had. Perhaps it's not the brightest, maybe it's impossible.. But gosh darnit am I obsessed with this idea.

So I'm sure we're all aware of wotcs 5e presence at cons or game stores with their Adventurers League organized play. They tried something similar with 3e with "Living Greyhawk" from what I understand. The idea is that if you can make one character and play in an AL game that spans multiple cons, or store events, levelling them up appropriately as they go along..

My issue with this is that each character doesn't really change anything about the world. They adhere to strict rules. The world does not feel real or like any specific character could go and do something that drastically changes the world. I could not use my character to side with the Storm Giants in storm kings thunder and hunt down the small-folk and become a notorious anti-hero feared by all!!

Then I started thinking.. There's a desire from new school D&D players to try out older editions.. What better way to show them the openness and freedom of OD&D then for us to give them the canvas, the brushes, and the paint and say "Go nuts". With each action having a direct effect on the world.

If Bob playing at Gary Con wanted to hide out in the catacombs and start a gang of thieves to steal from adventurers that came through the passageways at NTRPGCon, it would be possible.

That's my fantasy. We could promote these forums and old school gaming in general.. I think it's a neat idea and would love to hear what people have to say about this.

The idea is that it's a living, breathing campaign, similar to the old Blackmoor or Greyhawk days.. We would use the Outdoor Survival game map as our campaign setting and follow the 3LBB to determine the locations of Castles, Dungeons, etc.

It's a crazy idea, but I think it could be a lot of fun.. Even just for a trial run.

I have a name for it too --

Odd World : Where Anything Can Happen

(Odd as in OD&D )

[bravewolf]

I have no familiarity with Adventurers League except for the name. Is your concept similar to the OSR Flailsnails conventions?

link

[Vile Traveller]

I think the key difference in smubee's suggestion is that the Con referees should be in contact, and share play reports so that the next Con game can build any changes brought about by the PCs into the shared world. The tricky part, of course, is that referees need to wait for the last Con report to come in so they can make the necessary adjustments - or, if the PC act was hugely significant, they might have to substantially base the adventure on those changes. It's probably not that crazy an idea, given there are not that many OSR Con referees out there, and OSR PCs tend not to be as über-powerful as in other games.

[havard]

I don't know if any of you are familiar with TORG, the RPG from the early 1990s, but in that game they had organized play, not from conventions, but from people sending in their reports. The game deals with several outside forces invading different parts of earth and the setting would actually change based on what different gaming groups reported doing in their home games. I was always wondering what would have happened if more people had access to the Internet when that game was first released.

So back to smubee's idea: Is there any reason why it needs to be limited to convention play?

In the C&C Society each GM controlled his own region of the map. Is that the best way to go, or should more groups go through the same modules such as in the Living Greyhawk or TORG campaigns?



-Havard

[Starbeard]

I've always fantasized about this idea too. There was a very brief while where I ran an OD&D megadungeon at my university, wherein the players would delve into the steam tunnels and worse beneath a fantastical version of the university itself. I thought it would real neat to have other universities running similar megadungeons, with a club site where refs and players could report back and forth. Players from another college could show up with PCs from their 'home' campaign.

Alas, my megadungeon dwindled fairly quickly, and the only D&D I could get people interested after that was a B/X sandbox with classic modules. I still pine for the idea of a 'living' campaign that allows different groups and parties to interact like the original C&C campaigns.

[tetramorph]

Chainsaw runs his megadungeon as an ongoing campaign across cons. So it is possible.

[smubee]

Aug 3, 2017 5:06:21 GMT -6 havard said:

I don't know if any of you are familiar with TORG, the RPG from the early 1990s, but in that game they had organized play, not from conventions, but from people sending in their reports. The game deals with several outside forces invading different parts of earth and the setting would actually change based on what different gaming groups reported doing in their home games. I was always wondering what would have happened if more people had access to the Internet when that game was first released.

So back to smubee's idea: Is there any reason why it needs to be limited to convention play?

In the C&C Society each GM controlled his own region of the map. Is that the best way to go, or should more groups go through the same modules such as in the Living Greyhawk or TORG campaigns?



-Havard

That's very interesting, I had not heard of that before!

But no, it wouldn't have to be limited to con games, it could include home games as well. And I also thought of a way for people who could not participate in a certain dungeon delve, their characters could all be in one big database or document and the characters could be used as hirelings if they wanted. That's hard to explain, but here's a better example --

Bob from Gary Con got a whole bunch of money and treasure but he's 50 XP away from levelling up, and he wants to be a higher level by the time he goes back to Gary Con. So. He hears that there is an Odd World event at NTRPGCON and includes his character as a hireling (although this would need to be up to the individual players) so that he can go out and get XP without needing to travel to every convention or home game.

My other idea was very reminiscent of the C&C Society's Great Kingdom where all of those interested refs would primarily develop their own city, dungeon, and surrounding environment.. But we would all know what the world as a whole looks like.

So then if Bob was playing in my city/dungeon and he got a disease that spreads death wherever he goes, if he was then to go to one of your tables and play in YOUR city/dungeon then his disease would spread causing a pandemonium.

Then perhaps the home games could have people on the hunt for the death spreader and rumours would fly and this character could become an actual legend, because none of the other players would know HOW he brings death with him (a disease) and they might think that he's just a very powerful magic user.

[Starbeard]

Aug 3, 2017 9:35:45 GMT -6 smubee said:

And I also thought of a way for people who could not participate in a certain dungeon delve, their characters could all be in one big database or document and the characters could be used as hirelings if they wanted.

I recently tried this in my Roll20 B/X game, though so far only on a case by case basis, and I can say that it does seem to work. The campaign has a fairly large pool of players, with only a small number showing up every week. For the others, rather than have their PCs sitting around wasting money at the inn, some have put themselves out as hirelings when they aren't playing. I leave it entirely up to them what their initial pay limits and demands are, but they must also understand that as NPCs they are subject to the whims of reaction rolls and morale checks.

I like it and will be making it an 'official' option. It actually seems to encourage the mentality of managing multiple PCs, since they might not want to risk losing control of their 'main', but are happy to hire out their 'alts', and it also has the cool effect of allowing all of the PCs to recognize and interact with each other, even if their players never meet.

[Starbeard]

One caveat I can think of is that different referees would of course run very different games. Of course this is inevitable, expected and encouraged; it certainly didn't seem to cause any problems in the Lake Geneva games. However, over time and adding more and more players through convention play, one can at least see why Gary & Co. began moving toward an exhaustive and codified set of rules for 'official' games, and why the most successful Living Campaigns have been during the post- Magic: The Gathering era (the king of league games), under WotC (the king's creator), using versions or offshoots of D&D that encourage procedural rules over rulings. In short: most players, no matter how much they might 'get' the whole ethos of OD&D, will have to fight that involuntary urge to feel cheated whenever their character gets penalized or hurt in a way that wouldn't have happened in their usual game. I'm sure most would rather just roll up a new character than risk a PC they care about against the whims of an untried group.

Personally, my dream is that people would be all over the idea of global OD&D megacampaigns. Realistically I think the most marketable OSR ruleset for the job would be Classic D&D (actually, probably Labyrinth Lord), supplemented with a few guideline documents, like an official policy breaking down how xp is awarded and how campaign time is kept, 'house' rules that shouldn't be changed unless everyone at the table agrees, a guide on limiting the power levels of new items created for your game, and maybe even a standardized document referee's fill in as disclaimers for their games ('Warning: some of my tricks and traps will require a save vs. death').

But having said all of that, if I had to choose between them I'd rather see an OD&D megacampaign going strong, like in the old days but aided with today's communication technology to allow it to grow even larger.

Imagine the possibilities on magical research! Raizenbrayne in London researches his own spell, Raizenbrayne's Forfending Habiliment, and teaches it to a friend, then later travels to GaryCon and watches in amazement as his table partner Aznageezer from Des Moines casts that very spell in battle!

[grodog]

Aug 3, 2017 9:08:15 GMT -6 tetramorph said:

Chainsaw runs his megadungeon as an ongoing campaign across cons. So it is possible.

Matt Finch started Mythrus Tower at NTX using a similar "living" model. I don't recall if he's running it at other conventions, too, however.

Allan.

[Deleted]

First, this would be a LOT of work.

Second, what happens if I don't WANT a "Staff of Infinite Resurrections" in my campaign?

[Starbeard]

Aug 3, 2017 14:21:38 GMT -6 @gronanofsimmerya said:

First, this would be a LOT of work.

Second, what happens if I don't WANT a "Staff of Infinite Resurrections" in my campaign?

1) Precisely.

2) Which is why it would require each of the participating referees to keep in contact online, sharing their creations as part of a "peer review" process, which brings us back to (1).


If you can find the GMs willing to do what it takes to overcome (1), then it has infinite potential as a campaign model.

[havard]

Aug 3, 2017 14:21:38 GMT -6 @gronanofsimmerya said:

First, this would be a LOT of work.

Second, what happens if I don't WANT a "Staff of Infinite Resurrections" in my campaign?

Excellent point.

I was thinking that not everything can carry over from one group to the next. Perhaps treat play reports as rumors rather than facts?

What I would like to see is some system where Kingdoms, factions etc can be strengthened or weakened based on the reports. So if three gaming groups all work against the northern Orcs over many adventures, those Orcs would eventually become less of a threat to every campaign. Ideally there should be some online tool to handle those things. But I guess it depends what one thinks will be gained from this.

-Havard

[murquhart72]

I always figured this was the way The Game was played anyway. If a player comes in with a Staff of Infinite Resurrections and the Ref didn't have that in his game, the item would be "on hold" or hidden in a pocket universe until said player finds another game.
Or maybe I just skimmed too much and don't know what I'm talking about...

[Scott Anderson]

FLAILSNAILS rules would mean a particular ref would not have to allow a particular item from another campaign.

[smubee]

Aug 3, 2017 14:21:38 GMT -6 @gronanofsimmerya said:

First, this would be a LOT of work.

Second, what happens if I don't WANT a "Staff of Infinite Resurrections" in my campaign?

As noted elsewhere, this would require communication between the referees involved, but it would be important to state that using the 3LBB as "The world". If it's not in the 3 LBB then we can't use it.

Communication between refs would be necessary as well for when stocking dungeons -- you don't want too many Warhammers in a dungeon.

And in regards to the number 1 comment about the amount of work required, it would be built as it went along. A couple of refs running their dungeons over the course of a few games. If we were to gain traction and become more popular then there would be more work involved keeping track.

[smubee]

Aug 3, 2017 16:39:02 GMT -6 havard said:

Aug 3, 2017 14:21:38 GMT -6 @gronanofsimmerya said:

First, this would be a LOT of work.

Second, what happens if I don't WANT a "Staff of Infinite Resurrections" in my campaign?

Excellent point.

I was thinking that not everything can carry over from one group to the next. Perhaps treat play reports as rumors rather than facts?

What I would like to see is some system where Kingdoms, factions etc can be strengthened or weakened based on the reports. So if three gaming groups all work against the northern Orcs over many adventures, those Orcs would eventually become less of a threat to every campaign. Ideally there should be some online tool to handle those things. But I guess it depends what one thinks will be gained from this.

-Havard

This is exactly what I'm thinking as well..

Say centaurs are rarities in the forests, but they're discovered by a group. The group then starts hunting centaurs and breeding them for an army to raise against another refs city to overtake it and become the leaders of it.. Etc.

[ritt]

And a very ambitious and exciting idea it is!

The above-mentioned FLAILSNAILS Conventions, which address some of the issues noted: jrients.blogspot.com/2011/08/flailsnails-conventions.html

[Deleted]

But the problem with "if it's not in the 3LBB we can't use it" is that it's the exact opposite of the intention of the authors of the game.

[smubee]

Aug 3, 2017 23:51:59 GMT -6 @gronanofsimmerya said:

But the problem with "if it's not in the 3LBB we can't use it" is that it's the exact opposite of the intention of the authors of the game.

For continuity sake I meant that the 3LBB would be used.. Any ref-made items could absolutely be made and implemented into their own games, but again, with discussion with the other refs.

[Deleted]

Oh, I see. Yeah, that would work, as long as you had an agreement that a ref could exclude something so that if I really really wanted my world to have a Flagon of Infinite Beer I could have it but other refs didn't need to agree

[Deleted]

Aug 4, 2017 11:42:58 GMT -6 @gronanofsimmerya said:

Oh, I see. Yeah, that would work, as long as you had an agreement that a ref could exclude something so that if I really really wanted my world to have a Flagon of Infinite Beer I could have it but other refs didn't need to agree

"Staff of Infinite Resurrections" no way, "Flagon of Infinite Beer" sure let the players get drunk and then start rolling for wandering monsters!

[Scott Anderson]

What about a Tuba of Infinite Chickens? We good with that?

[bravewolf]

Aug 4, 2017 16:31:57 GMT -6 Scott Anderson said:

What about a Tuba of Infinite Chickens? We good with that?[r/quote]


Give me Streams of Whiskey instead!

[bravewolf]

smubee

Aug 3, 2017 0:30:58 GMT -6 smubee said:

This is just an idea that I had. Perhaps it's not the brightest, maybe it's impossible.. But gosh darnit am I obsessed with this idea.

So I'm sure we're all aware of wotcs 5e presence at cons or game stores with their Adventurers League organized play. They tried something similar with 3e with "Living Greyhawk" from what I understand. The idea is that if you can make one character and play in an AL game that spans multiple cons, or store events, levelling them up appropriately as they go along..

My issue with this is that each character doesn't really change anything about the world. They adhere to strict rules. The world does not feel real or like any specific character could go and do something that drastically changes the world. I could not use my character to side with the Storm Giants in storm kings thunder and hunt down the small-folk and become a notorious anti-hero feared by all!!

Then I started thinking.. There's a desire from new school D&D players to try out older editions.. What better way to show them the openness and freedom of OD&D then for us to give them the canvas, the brushes, and the paint and say "Go nuts". With each action having a direct effect on the world.

If Bob playing at Gary Con wanted to hide out in the catacombs and start a gang of thieves to steal from adventurers that came through the passageways at NTRPGCon, it would be possible.

That's my fantasy. We could promote these forums and old school gaming in general.. I think it's a neat idea and would love to hear what people have to say about this.

The idea is that it's a living, breathing campaign, similar to the old Blackmoor or Greyhawk days.. We would use the Outdoor Survival game map as our campaign setting and follow the 3LBB to determine the locations of Castles, Dungeons, etc.

It's a crazy idea, but I think it could be a lot of fun.. Even just for a trial run.

I have a name for it too --

Odd World : Where Anything Can Happen

(Odd as in OD&D )

I think it's a great idea, smubee.

[bravewolf]

smubee, have you given any thought to a minimum number of refs that you'd want on board before launching Odd World?

[smubee]

Aug 4, 2017 22:22:56 GMT -6 bravewolf said:

smubee, have you given any thought to a minimum number of refs that you'd want on board before launching Odd World?

Could be as little as just one or two, myself included. If anyone wants to talk ideas about this, we could start a PM Thread and work somethings out..

If anyone's interested in spitballing some ideas or something, lemme know!

[waysoftheearth]

I've also been wondering for four or five years now whether it would be possible to run a long-term, multi-ref OD&D environment with a large(ish) body of players coming and going as they please.

Finding and coordinating the necessary refs and players would likely imply it should be, at least in part, an on-line endeavor. It would be nice to think that tools like the internet, social media, smart phone apps etc. should be able to facilitate what might ultimately look something like a human-moderated MMORPG.

In my musing it would likely begin from a hex map of a small "known world" comprising a few towns and dungeons. The key element would be division and management of refereeing responsibilities. The towns and wilderness areas would (initially) be created and run by an overall campaign "referee", but responsibility for specific towns and/or wilderness areas could be delegated, as necessary. However, each dungeon should be created and run by an individual "dungeon master". So, if there were (initially) five dungeons in the known world, then there would also be five DMs; one operating each dungeon.

Players would start off being positioned at a town by the the overall campaign referee, who would also be responsible for administering the passage of campaign turns. Campaign turns would likely be tied to the real world calendar, so that (at least!) one campaign turn would transpire for, say, each real-world month. This would timebox the running of dungeon expeditions and keep the overall campaign moving along (albeit kinda slowly). Multiple campaign turns (say, 1--6?) could, of course, pass in one real month if no dungeon expeditions were in progress to help speed a dull winter along.

For each campaign turn players would issue orders for their turn to the campaign ref. These would pretty coarse things, like: gather an army, rest and heal up, create a magic item, travel from A to B, etc. Players in towns could advertise for or join expeditions to travel to other towns, explore the wilderness, or to delve into the various dungeons. The campaign referee would resolve any "in town" activities, or delegate the running of each dungeon/wilderness expedition to the appropriate DM/ref on an "as needs" basis. This would be somewhat like convention gaming insofar as; an arbitrary group of players are assembled and assigned to an arbitrary referee for a dungeon/wilderness session.

Multiple dungeon delves could be in progress at any one time across the known world, limited only by the number of groups the operating pool of dungeon masters could handle. It might be possible for a particularly (busy/popular) dungeon master to run multiple expeditions within a single campaign turn, or else delegate running of excess expeditions to his dungeon to a sub-ordinate DM.

A single (busy!) player could theoretically run characters in more than one area within the known world--possibly encountering his own alts as NPCs? It should also be possible for a DM to operate player characters who visit dungeons other than his own.


Each DM would have to "report back" a synopsis of any "events" that occurred at, or any expeditions to, his dungeon during each real month, including any change of status to any PCs involved. This could be advertising the addition of new levels or challenges, the elevation of new heroes, the demise of existing ones, and so on. The overall campaign referee would compile these reports into a monthly bulletin, which would be published for all players in the game to see. I imagine that the referee's World News bulletin would include all the DM's expedition reports as well as reports of new wilderness explored, new dungeons discovered, new town news/rumours, and something of a "leader board" detailing the location and status of all the PCs and major NPCs presently operating in the game. It might be something like a modern/internet version of The Ryth Chronicles.

All that may sound ridiculously ambitious. It probably is.

But consider what the Ryth guys managed to accomplish in the 70s with just pen and paper and a mechanical typewriter.


Fun stuff to think about, for sure

[Finarvyn]

Some really interesting ideas here.

Would the plan be to have me create an "Odd World" section of the boards devoted specifically to this living campaign? I could see threads where folks could give game synopsis of how their games played out. I could see threads where folks could post images of magic item certs or that kind of thing that others could print off for their games. I could see threads where folks would post those "I'm running Odd World at such-and-such convention, who's in?" That kind of thing might be best kept separate from the general discussion.

I think that the tricky thing is to find a balance between (a) giving total freedom to be creative, and (b) having enough rules to be consistent and fair. I haven't done Pathfinder Society, but I have done 5E's Adventurer's League and I know that they have some standard rules for stat creation, hit point advancement, and so on.

Also, thinking about the 5E Adventurer's League, it might be interesting to have a list of "official" modules for Odd World. That could limit somewhat the items that characters could find. (Unless the intent is to allow for totally gonzo play. I think this ties back to Michael's "not in the 3 LBB" post earlier.)

[Starbeard]

I think it's telling that more than a few of us have had the same bright idea over the past handful of years. Maybe the time is right.

I've noticed that experiments on running grand, multiplayer campaigns have proliferated in the past few years, each of them addressing a different scheduling or organizational problem. The FLAILSNAILS group mentioned above was formed so that busy players could hop in and out of busy DM's online games, reusing the same character sheets so that they didn't have to start over every time they sat down at a new virtual table. Ben Robbins outlined his West Marches concept as guidelines to help DMs run and sustain hexcrawl sandboxes for any number of players, and that concept is still going pretty strong on forum games and Roll20. There's also the recent trend for DMs to jump on the "Open Table" bandwagon, as a reaction against the plot-driven campaign that always fizzles because you can never get the same four people to commit for more than a few weeks: they tend to focus on dungeon crawls, start and end each session with everyone in town, and whoever shows up gets to play (sound familiar?). The wargaming community has also has the Megagame, which in many ways is exactly what we're describing here, except that they are individual scenarios that are coordinated to last only a single session or weekend.

None of the reach out far enough to achieve it, but they all at least address a small corner of that thing we all desire, which is to achieve the breadth and scope of the Ryth Chronicles in the form of a true Grand Campaign—or Megagame, or Megacampaign, or Multigroup RPG, whatever you want to call it.

The way I see it, we can see these trends as omens: obviously West March and Open Table games have struck a chord with gamers; Megagames continue to grow, and are very successfully branching out to include fantasy, science fiction and roleplaying themes; and Roll20 is practically designed around the needs of the Adventurer's League and the Flailsnails Convention. To me this seems to say that the time is right, for if we build it they will come.