"Scale" is one of the key elements of a campaign, as in will the players be small timers just trying to make a buck, score a quick forture, or just make the payments on their ship as is often the case in traveller, or will they be big dealers who's actions affect the course of whole civillizations and millions of people.

A friend of mine had usually ran small scale games in which the players were just adventurers with nothing more in sight than their next level up. He said he wanted to try running a really high scale campaign where the players would be major characters affecting the game world in major ways, but was afraid that such a campaign would be too complex.

So we talked about it.

I pointed out that a grand scale campaign really doesn't have to be more complex to run or keep track of than a small scale campaign. Basically most campaigns he ran had about as the same number of fully fleshed out NPCs, most of whom were small timers like the PCs with a few higher ups thrown in, and the reall big people were simply handled as abstracts above the players level and never really encountered directly, like governments, etc.

So I pointed out to him that in a grand scale campaign the situation would be essentially the same, with the polarities reversed. In the grand scale campaign you could have the same number of NPCs fully fleshed out, they would simply be high level ones, while the masses would be handled in the abstract. The level of complexity remained the same in either case, it was just a matter of reversing the ends of the spectrum that get handled in detail  or abstracted.

He's working on a grand scale game where the players will be determining the fate of a major part of the galaxy thru their actions now.

So, does the scale of a campaign affect the ammount of complexity and work for the GM or not? Handled right a high level campaign need'nt be harder to run than a low level one.

To me it all comes down to how much the players are driving the action. If it's a campaign that has them swept up in events it's more work for me no matter what the scope. But if it's a game where they're driving the action then I'm as much along for the ride as they are.

If you're talking rules complexity, Nobilis and Amber are both very rules lite and yet handle multiverse spanning superdudes pretty well (from all accounts, I've yet to play either). On another end of the spectrum is Epic D&D 3.5, which can be as complex as the number of sourcebooks you allow, and comes out of the gate vastly more rules heavy than either of those other two.

I am reminded of a scene from "Star Trek: Generations".  Specifically, the Stellar Cartograhy room scene wherein Picard and Data track and plot the course of the MacGuffin Wave what drives that film's plot.

In that scene, you'd have a map of the galaxy (or a reasonable subset thereof).  Data would zoom in on a system, and the same general pattern of stellar orbits and phenomina would reappear on the smaller scale of a single solar system.  Zoom tighter, and you see it again on the scale of a single planet and its satellites.

What I'm getting at here is that you can conceive of a setting in the same way.  The way that you would organize a small setting--a village and its surrounding environs--is the same way that you would organize a barony and its surrounding villages, a kingdom and its baronies, or an empire and its kingdoms.  The difference is the scale at which the PCs operate.  The general patterns are the same; the specific implementations vary.  Exploit this when doing your world-building; scale up or down as necessary.

The real main point of my post was that somewhere there may be GMs who have stuck to small scale campaigns, thinking that they're easier to run and have been intimidated by the perceived complexity of a grand, epic scale campaign. So i wanted to suggest that running such a huge scale campaign need be no harder than running a small scale one.

I think the extra work comes from extrapolating the consequences of the players' actions - you can keep the focus on a similar sized slice of the world, but more or less by definition, powerful actors are going to generate more ripple effects than weaker ones.

You can ignore those flow-on effects and just retain your focus, but in some way I think that undermines the idea of playing a high (politically) powered campaign.  If you just say that your guys are important in the universe, but never show the effects they have at the ground level then you've really just got a veneer of power rather than the real thing.

More generally, I think it's hard to excite and impress player who start at or near the top of the tree.  Play with street (or village) level characters and a meeting with the mayor is a big deal - how do you achieve the same effect in a high influence campaign without power inflation?

Quote from: lacemakerI think the extra work comes from extrapolating the consequences of the players' actions - you can keep the focus on a similar sized slice of the world, but more or less by definition, powerful actors are going to generate more ripple effects than weaker ones.

You can ignore those flow-on effects and just retain your focus, but in some way I think that undermines the idea of playing a high (politically) powered campaign.  If you just say that your guys are important in the universe, but never show the effects they have at the ground level then you've really just got a veneer of power rather than the real thing.

More generally, I think it's hard to excite and impress player who start at or near the top of the tree.  Play with street (or village) level characters and a meeting with the mayor is a big deal - how do you achieve the same effect in a high influence campaign without power inflation?

Well, he;s working on one of my favorite ideas: Rebuilding a galactic civilization that crashed due to a major war some 300 years ago, now that a ship from the past, armed with tech higher than anyone in the galaxy currently has, has returned.

Basically it's gene rodennberry's "Andromeda" sans Sorbo's herculean ego. (I.E. done right.)

So generally the players are trying to rebuild the old republic after civillization and the tech base had been crashed in the war. In general, players will still have missions to preform to impress NPCs, but the NPCs will represent entire planets and systems. Impress them right and they'll join your effort. Some NPCs will try to kill the players and steal the ship, of course, same as in a 'street level' campaign where the players have something people want.

But the main elements remain the same, it's just that the scale is bigger. Instead of impressing an NPC to get him to do you a favor, you're impressing one to get him to have the government he reps side with you in the rebuilding process.

Hi ... quite new to this site, so try to be nice with me ...

I believe large scale campaigns need a bigger initial investment. I like the analogy of zooming in and out : you zoom in when you play, but when you design the original plot, I think you have to zoom out a lot.

The point of a large scale campaign, I believe, is the BIG story running behind, that reveal itself little by little. If you want that major plot to be believable, you need to have prepared it in advance. Which, I think, takes time. But from a session to session point of view, I don't think it changes many things.

As for characters creation, I would propose to only flesh out main ones, the ones that do have a major influence on the world, knowing that maybe the PCs won't even meet them. As for minor characters, they can be created "on the spot".

As for the PCs' influence on the campaign, I believe there is one way to manage that : use a multi plots campaing. Create many plots, that can be understand thru the big story, and that will converge in the end. That way you can manage the PCs' influence and still have something plausible to play.
Well, of course, building up a multi plots campaign takes more time ...