On this post (http://untimately.blogspot.com/2012/05/persistent-campaign-settings.html) Brendan talks about Persistent Campaign Settings. And cites the Majestic Wilderlands as one example he knows about (thanks for the shout out). In it he gives a number of observations and asks some questions.

QuoteObviously, there could be some logistical complications with this. What if multiple groups are playing at the same time and affect each other? What if one group plays in "the past" with regard to other groups? It seems like temporal paradox could potentially be a problem, though realistically I don't think it would be difficult to avoid.

The most number of groups I ever had running is two. I generally run the campaigns in geographically separate areas so there is little chance of overlap. In the past couple of years I had a campaign where my regular group was adventuring in the City of Viridistan and the game store campaign was taking place around the City-State of the Invincible Overlord. The two cities are several hundred miles apart in different cultural regions.

The closest to two campaigns interacting was in college, nearly 30 years ago, where my hometown player group ran into things that the college player group did and vice versa. The college group was of mostly of good alignment and the hometown group (which included Dwayne of Gamer's Closet and Tim of Gothridge Manor) was of lawful evil alignment. Dwayne was playing Lord Divolic a Lawful Evil Myrmidon of Set, and Tim was Count Travlin a kick ass fighter type.

The college group messed up one of Divolic's slaving operations, Divolic investigated and found out it was the college group. Finding out where they are he decided to send them the Bag of Holding that contained the demi-lich he captured in the Tomb of Horrors *. So the first game I ran for the college group after break, they had the Bag of Holding delivered to them. Unfortunately they had a paladin in the group who decided to Detect Evil and sense the bag contained a great evil. To the party sorrow, after all it was a bag of holding, they had the bag dispelled. Ironically Dwayne came to the same college a year later and everybody had a good laugh when he told them that he sent the bag and what was in it.

Stories, aside, the basic technique to running the two groups concurrently in the same campaign is to manipulate each campaign so that there little chance of the two interfering with each other. And if they do the one thing you have to avoid is a direct assault by one group on the other. Dwayne was gracious enough to realize that there was no way of going directly after the other group due to physical distance and came up with a fair alternative that worked out in the end.  With the rise of virtual tabletop, and the internet the number of ways disparate groups can interact has greatly increased.  Beyond the direct assault issue, just adjudicate what each group does fairly and don't play favorites.


*Divolic and Travlin got to the main treasure room of the Tomb of Horrors and without touching or taking anything, Divolic held a bag of holding upside down above the demi-lich. Then Travlin grabbed some of the treasure causing the Demi-Lich to rise. Right into the Bag! Divolic shut it and that was the end of the demi-lich.

QuoteAnother potential issue is that such a setting could become too important. That is, a referee might be more cautious with trying new things, and might also become more sensitive to players that don't take the setting seriously.

One firm rule I established for myself is I will live with the consequences of the players action. I also tell the players that the inhabitants of the Majestic Wilderlands are every bit as "real" as they are. That they are not the first adventurers to trod it's soils nor will they be the last. That while they are free to try anything they want, I will be considering ALL the consequences of their actions and they should do so as well. That while the risk is great, players have had characters that fundamentally changed the course of the Majestic Wilderlands. And there were characters that met a ignoble demise.

One thing I did to help make things more fair was run campaigns where players were all members of a particular group. One important campaign where where the players were all members of the city guards. You know those weeny fighters that get the tar beat out of them by adventurers every time they visit the city. Now the shoe was on the other foot and boy the players came through. From the Knight Killer Crossbow to the Alert Stick, they came up with a variety of methods where low level fighters could handle adventuring parties far more experienced than themselves. Now the city guard are not the punching bags as they used to be and the players have a lot more respect.

As for players not taking things seriously, a lot of the Majestic Wilderlands is bog standard fantasy. Most of these players just wind up roleplaying themselves in the campaign. The only thing I insist on is that whatever happens is that they react as if they were really there and that they limit themselves to what their character would know. I rarely have trouble any players following these simple rules.

QuoteCertain kinds of games seem like they would work better with this kind of setting than others.

A designer would have to work hard not to make a fantasy RPG that wouldn't work with the Majestic Wilderlands. Generally RPGs that won't work with my campaign are those that are oriented to one specific setting. Even then if that setting assumption is close enough to the Majestic Wilderlands, like Harn and Harnmaster, then I can still use it. This is because of the long shadow of D&D and the fantasy tropes that it always had regardless of edition. Since the Majestic Wilderlands still has D&D tropes at it's heart, it works with a large number of Fantasy RPGs. I ran it using AD&D 1st, Fantasy Hero, Harnmaster, GURPS, D&D 3.0, and now Swords & Wizardry/MW Supplement.

QuoteI think it has been much more common recently to make campaign settings more disposable. I blame this partly on an embarrassment of riches;

Successful published settings are that way because they save referee time in preparing for a campaign and many of them have compelling backgrounds. Roleplaying games have been around long enough that we have a decent selection. Majestic Wilderlands is an example of this as it evolved out of the Wilderlands of High Fantasy. The only difference between me and any other referee of fantasy RPGs is two things

1) 90% of the time I ran a fantasy roleplaying campaign I set it in the Majestic Wilderlands. The lone exception is Harn.

2) Anytime I need something truly different than how I setup the City-State of the Invincible Overlord, I took one of the "blank" region on my wilderlands map and put it down there. They are far enough apart that it wasn't hard in coming up with a plausible reason for the regions to co-exist.

    The aspect of this that most intrigues me is how the remnants of one campaign (or group of players) could affecting other, future campaigns.

I make notes what each group has done. To be honest only the most significant changes, tend to persist so if you lose some the little details don't sweat. If anything the player will remind you the next campaign if you forgot something. For example the Council of Viridistan that rules the City-State of Viridistan. The time line is as follows

1) The Emperor is killed by the character Endless Star, a paladin of Mitra towards the end of the campaign. This was the college group mentioned earlier and took place around 1985

Then in 1986 or so, I ran a campaign using Fantasy Hero. Again with the college group with a few players that dropped out and some new players

2) One player puts on the Evil Orb, Crown, Specter of Might and kills the Clerics of Set that were ruling Viridstan. The other players manage to zap him with the Chromatic Crystal and got the regalia off of him. But now the party was faced with a city in chaos. So they split the chromatic crystal into seven pieces and gave one to each character and then established the Council of Viridistan to rule the city.

Campaign ends, but two players were unhappy with the ending the campaign and so fled the city along with their pieces of the crystal, to continue adventure.  Leaving two open seats on the Council but can't be filled because each councilor is required to have a piece of the Chromatic Crystal. Now flashforward 20+ years

3) A campaign using Swords and Wizardry revolves around the adventures of a Half-Viridian Fighter, a Elven Mountebank, and Human Thothian Mage, results in the players rescuing one of the Viridian Councilors, a former PC now NPC named Cathwar, aiding Council in achieving a decisive victory in the nearly 20 year long civil war, and recovering the two missing pieces of the Chromatic Crystal. The campaign ended with two of the players choosing to sit on the council.

This is an example of one of several sequences of how players effected the Majestic Wilderlands. The keys elements that made this work again is the willingness to go with whatever consequences that plausibly results from the players action, recording the highlights, and sticking to the same setting over a number of campaign.

Now to answer some of Brendan's specific questions.

Do any of you have a setting that keeps developing as specified above?

Yes the Majestic Wilderlands.

If so, did you start with a published setting, or did you start from scratch?

The Majestic Wilderlands started out using the Wilderlands of High Fantasy. The original Wilderlands were devoid of any high level campaign detail. It was all local level detail leaving it to the referee to craft the broad overview. In this it shared the same design as the Spinward Marches of Traveller.

How many campaigns or groups has your setting supported?

I would say a dozen groups, with one group in particular (centered around Tim and Dwayne) having more impact than any others.

Have you progressed through multiple historical or technological eras?

No, although Time Travel is a staple of my games and as fan of Time Travel stories and Alternate History I have several techniques that I use to make sure what the players do seem part of the normal history. These techniques revolve around the fact that history rarely records all the details of past events. I never ran a game set in the past although I considered it for one of my theme campaigns.

What about multiple game systems?


Yup main systems included (in order) AD&D 1st, Fantasy Hero, GURPS, and now Swords & Wizardry/MW Supplement. I ran one off games using Harnmaster, AD&D 2nd, D&D 3.0, and Basic Roleplaying.

Have you ever "upgraded" (or downgraded)?

Not sure what is meant by this. Early on I changed some fundamentals of the Wilderlands that transformed it into the Majestic Wilderlands. I went from 5 miles per hex to 12.5 miles per hex and the original villages became towns and important castles and I added a lot more smaller settling around these. I was lucky to hit on the idea of setting different fantasy in widely separated geographical regions early on which kept things fresh.

   

Do you think the diversity of products available now makes such fidelity unrealistic?

No is more of a lack of information about alternatives to published settings. Sure D&D and most fantasy RPGs had information about creating your own. But detailed advice on what to do was few and far between. So to the average referee using a published setting looked a lot less work than making up one of your own. The internet has changed all that and now there are several alternatives to choose from.

I contend that in the long run using a persistent setting for a specific genre winds up being less work for the referee. It like any skill or body of knowledge the more time and experience you build up the easier it becomes. Published setting can be still be a useful starting point. The trick is picking one that can be expanded as one's interest and tastes changes.

Are there any techniques that you use to record campaign developments?

Basically it all boils down to keeping good notes. I been using the Keep by Nbos (http://www.nbos.com/products/keep/keep.htm) recently.

Interesting reading, rob.  Very.  I'll review more later after I get off the iPad, but I grok this.  I am in a similar place, and actually posted about some sandbox effect fallout in my steel isle gaming thread.
I think I played with versions of rules, but started with a morphed AD&D that quickly changed to my own rules to mesh with and be a more representative physics engine.

QuoteI've been thinking recently about settings that grow, not just over the course of a single campaign, but over the course of many campaigns, perhaps with multiple groups. This, as I understand it, was how Greyhawk and Blackmoor were run, to some approximation.

He's getting confused with the notion of "campaign" here. The definition of "campaign" shifted with time to become character and plot centric, in the sense that a specific "campaign" follows the actions of a particular group of adventurers dealing with a particular issue/plot up to its resolution, victory, TPK and otherwise.

This is not what a "campaign" means in the context of Greyhawk, Blackmoor or indeed, O/AD&D. There weren't "multiple campaigns with multiple groups set in the world of Greyhawk at the time," Greyhawk *was* the campaign at the time. The focus here is the campaign milieu itself. All the groups adventuring in that particular world are in fact part of the same "campaign", like the Lake Geneva campaign, aka the Greyhawk campaign. Like Old Geezer/Mike Mornard once said, the story the game tells is the story of the world, and the characters are peripheral to all this. This is one of the major differences between ways to play the game.

Once the focus changes from the player character to the campaign milieu, and that you realize that whether the PCs survive or die, become somebodies or remain nobodies forever is entirely up to them, and not you DM, then things start to click into place. Earlier D&D campaigns and rules and products will suddenly make a lot more sense.

Now, the questions the guy asked are complex for me to answer, because my own conception of the campaign has evolved over time and still evolves as to this writing.

In the sense he describes, the persistent world/setting, I have had one persistent setting with four consecutive groups, though the world itself changes and morphed over time. It started as the Seven Spires campaign, which used 3rd ed/Arcana Evolved rules, which is a homebrew world that used some published material, amongst which Ghostwalk, Laelith, and a bunch of others. By the end of the game with the second group, the world itself changed dramatically and became Praemal, the world of Ptolus. I then ran a group through Ptolus using the 3.5 D&D rules. And later, I rewinded Ptolus some 300 years in the past to rebuild it using AD&D 1e as the underlying rules blending with the milieu, instead of the 3.5 rules, and this gave birth to the Ptolus AD&D game here on the RPG Site (in the Play-by-Posts section). These four groups are basically part of the same setting evolution.

But my notion of campaign evolved to a more macro, multiverse-level starting with the creation of another homebrew in the 90s, a homebrew which would evolve and change over time to become a cosmology instead by which I tie all the games I run, whether we are talking all editions of D&D, Call of Cthulhu, Stormbringer/Hawkmoon, World of Darkness games, Mythus, In Nomine Satanis/Magna Veritas, all these games are part of the same cosmology for my campaign's purposes, and thus, technically speaking, using the original concept of the campaign as one can find it in O/AD&D, all these games I run are in fact part of the same campaign, the Enrill.

Quote from: Benoist;540771He's getting confused with the notion of "campaign" here. The definition of "campaign" shifted with time to become character and plot centric, in the sense that a specific "campaign" follows the actions of a particular group of adventurers dealing with a particular issue/plot up to its resolution, victory, TPK and otherwise.

This is not what a "campaign" means in the context of Greyhawk, Blackmoor or indeed, O/AD&D. There weren't "multiple campaigns with multiple groups set in the world of Greyhawk at the time," Greyhawk *was* the campaign at the time. The focus here is the campaign milieu itself. All the groups adventuring in that particular world are in fact part of the same "campaign", like the Lake Geneva campaign, aka the Greyhawk campaign. Like Old Geezer/Mike Mornard once said, the story the game tells is the story of the world, and the characters are peripheral to all this. This is one of the major differences between ways to play the game.

Once the focus changes from the player character to the campaign milieu, and that you realize that whether the PCs survive or die, become somebodies or remain nobodies forever is entirely up to them, and not you DM, then things start to click into place. Earlier D&D campaigns and rules and products will suddenly make a lot more sense.

Campaign and Setting were not as separated, it is true.  Today, campaigns exist within settings, but that was not always the case.

I agree, BTW, that it is a fundamental-level thing.  I have also changed my internal perception, as the first orange sheets with a Celtrician PC, in the upper right-hand corner, says, "Campaign: Celtricia"...and today, that might read, "Setting:Celtricia, Campaign:Steel Isle"

Quote from: estar;540701Do any of you have a setting that keeps developing as specified above?

I have four long-term fantasy campaign settings and one sci-fi setting, the oldest homebrew dating back to 1987. I haven't run a game for that since about 2001 or so.

The Fantastic Wilderlands - Bob Bledsaw's Judges Guild setting
Etrania - a feudal European fantasy setting (1987)
Merthyr - a Celtic fantasy setting (2001)
Falchodas - A Roman fantasy setting where the Legio IX (the lost legion) re-settles Falchodas, a new world in a distant star system. (2010)

The evolving Sci-Fi setting is for Traveller, and is called the Fringe Sector.(1985)

Of non-evolving settings that don't see much play except for the infrequent one shot, I have perhaps a dozen mini-settings ranging from Early Colonial America in New England, a historical old west setting. a modern setting for Spycraft, and three for Gamma World including Colorado, California, and Florida, as well as one ancient middle-eastern setting, The Gates of Eden, which is both ancient and modern. There is also Alpha Centauri, Plieades Overwatch, a New BSG setting, Beyond the Red Line, Barsoom, and Delta Triangulum (Metamorphosis Alpha) for Sci-Fi.

QuoteIf so, did you start with a published setting, or did you start from scratch?

There were no published settings available when I started. So it was homebrew. One of the few things I do regret was the loss my first three homebrew settings from the 70's, the ones I originally started with. The first fantasy setting was actually mapped with crayola crayons. The first published setting I used was the Fantastic Wilderlands.

QuoteHow many campaigns or groups has your setting supported?

I lost count some years ago. Currently though, Falchodas is used for my home games and supports one regular group, and I use it for one-shots and convention games. The Wilderlands is also used for one-shot and convention games too.

QuoteHave you progressed through multiple historical or technological eras?

I haven't had that much free time (or a consistent group) since the first few campaigns in the late seventies. Merthyr, Falchodas, and Etrania feature multiple civilizations that are not historically or technologically synchronized, so, some kingdoms have more technology or are more historically advanced than others. Traveller, of course, features a wide range of Tech and Governments.

QuoteWhat about multiple game systems?

Mostly these are built for D&D, but really can be used for almost any game system with just a few tweaks here and there.

QuoteHave you ever "upgraded" (or downgraded)?

Upgraded or Downgraded what? The campaign setting itself? I'll borrow bits and bobs from other campaign settings, and of course, am almost always working on some new adventure, npc or locale for one or more of my campaign settings. The current favorite campaign settings are pretty much in a state of continual evolution, with new content being added at irregular intervals.

Quote Do you think the diversity of products available now makes such fidelity unrealistic?

No. The diversity is great! Raise your hand if you want your epic adventure to be the same, all of the time.

QuoteI contend that in the long run using a persistent setting for a specific genre winds up being less work for the referee. It like any skill or body of knowledge the more time and experience you build up the easier it becomes. Published setting can be still be a useful starting point. The trick is picking one that can be expanded as one's interest and tastes changes.

Using a persistent setting is a lot less work. With all the material at hand, I can, and often do, quickly pick a subset of adventures, locales, and NPC's to create a completely new adventure for a one shot, or to kick up the interest in a current game.

QuoteAre there any techniques that you use to record campaign developments?

I keep a three-ring binder for each campaign world and add adventuring notes as well as new content to that. There are two shelves of 1/2" and 3/4" binders in my office/games room.

Quote from: Benoist;540771He's getting confused with the notion of "campaign" here. The definition of "campaign" shifted with time to become character and plot centric, in the sense that a specific "campaign" follows the actions of a particular group of adventurers dealing with a particular issue/plot up to its resolution, victory, TPK and otherwise.

I think this is splitting hairs a bit. In First Fantasy Campaign, there was distinct groups running at different times doing different things. Brendan isn't talking about emphasizing story .

I think the biggest difference between campaign run today back then and today is the number of players per referee. Quite simply Arneson and Gygax had a huge number of players involved in their campaigns. In their accounts of what they did, I recognize many techniques which I used when managing LARP events. Note I am not contending they ran a LARP. Only that when dealing with a large number of roleplayers you need to do similar things to make the campaign work.

With smaller groups, the referee could spend more time crafting the campaign to work with the interests the group. Hence the focus on plot that many modern campaign have. However with larger groups your adventure need to be more well generic in it's appeal. Not that you can't have interesting encounters or locales only that you can't simply make a individual the focus of a session like you can in a campaign with a smaller group.

This is something I found out when running my regular weekly campaign versus the game store campaign.

In my opinion the size of the player base is the biggest difference, but not the only, between today's campaign, and the earliest campaigns.

Quote from: Benoist;540772evolve and change over time to become a cosmology instead by which I tie all the games I run

I'm glad I'm not the only person who does this!

Quote from: estar;540782I think this is splitting hairs a bit. In First Fantasy Campaign, there was distinct groups running at different times doing different things. Brendan isn't talking about emphasizing story .

I think the biggest difference between campaign run today back then and today is the number of players per referee. Quite simply Arneson and Gygax had a huge number of players involved in their campaigns. In their accounts of what they did, I recognize many techniques which I used when managing LARP events. Note I am not contending they ran a LARP. Only that when dealing with a large number of roleplayers you need to do similar things to make the campaign work.

With smaller groups, the referee could spend more time crafting the campaign to work with the interests the group. Hence the focus on plot that many modern campaign have. However with larger groups your adventure need to be more well generic in it's appeal. Not that you can't have interesting encounters or locales only that you can't simply make a individual the focus of a session like you can in a campaign with a smaller group.

This is something I found out when running my regular weekly campaign versus the game store campaign.

In my opinion the size of the player base is the biggest difference, but not the only, between today's campaign, and the earliest campaigns.

I don't think Brendan has an agenda in saying that, and I didn't intend to make it sound that way.

I agree that the sizes of the groups involved have participated to the evolution of the campaign focus from the milieu to the characters. I also do believe this is a nuance that is easily overlooked, because it seems to elude a lot of GMs out there. But I do think this is a very important nuance as far as organization of the world, the way the campaign is ordained, and the resulting actual play are concerned.

There might be something of a different perspective here, between your experience running the same campaign through different game systems which I would qualify as relatively smooth, thinking of the way you describe the various transitions that occurred throughout its run, and mine, where the differences in play styles in the last twenty years, between Vampire the Masquerade and WoD games, to then 3rd edition and OGL games, to come back then to OD&D and AD&D (finding out I was running a Vampire as a milieu-centered campaign from the start, and seeing then how that was fundamentally different from the other games I played with different "Storytellers" at the time) put the different game plays that result from this shift in campaign focus in sharp contrast for me.

Quote from: VectorSigma;540784I'm glad I'm not the only person who does this!

Heh that's awesome! So you have a general multigames campaign cosmology going on too?

yeah, and the size of the player base can do a lot to the quality of the games and setting as well.
I'm lucky to have a waiting list for my live game, and for the newer Online game starting soon, but I can't do any more.
Physically...cannot...fit...ANY...more gaming in.

But back in college, I'd run 2-3 games a week, and it certainly added a lot of complxity in all at once.

Quote from: Benoist;540786Heh that's awesome! So you have a general multigames campaign cosmology going on too?

Yep.  Every game I've ever run fits in there somewhere.  It's a decadent, silly thing, but it makes me smile.  Many D&D games (various editions) across three different worlds, a couple of CP2020 games that evolved into sci-fi/time-travel, one space opera campaign, some reskinned WoD, and some odds & ends.

Once you presume parallel worlds and stuff in a setting, it kind of takes care of itself, but I do enjoy weaving small things in and out occasionally.  Much of the time it's been different players, so they don't notice, but sometimes a player picks up on something and there's a "hey!" or "well, shit."

Quote from: VectorSigma;540791Yep.  Every game I've ever run fits in there somewhere.  It's a decadent, silly thing, but it makes me smile.  Many D&D games (various editions) across three different worlds, a couple of CP2020 games that evolved into sci-fi/time-travel, one space opera campaign, some reskinned WoD, and some odds & ends.

Once you presume parallel worlds and stuff in a setting, it kind of takes care of itself, but I do enjoy weaving small things in and out occasionally.  Much of the time it's been different players, so they don't notice, but sometimes a player picks up on something and there's a "hey!" or "well, shit."

Ditto, same thing for me and the Enrill. It's the beauty of it isn't it? That the players of different games don't have to care about it at all to play the game, and yet, if they have played a bit with you, they might catch a glimpse of a bigger picture in the background. That, and the feeling you're not having to "choose" between this or that game so much as you choose which aspect of the campaign you want to play with this time around, is awesome all by itself.