Sure the title sounds like the latest Street Fighter videogame, and it’s the weekend (traditionally a pretty slow time here on TT) and summer/pre-GenCon (which I’m gathering slows down many RPG sites)…but sometimes you just have to post ’em when you think of ’em. This is one of those.
Here’s the idea: Why not collaborate to create an adventure, or an entire campaign, much like the writers of a TV show?
Several GMs could get together online, probably via a mailing list (perhaps with light website support as well), and come up with the framework. Everyone would pitch in, improve the original idea and add twists of their own — and then play it with their own groups.
Compile the actual play feedback from several groups, and you might have a pretty interesting package to put online, either for free or as a low-cost PDF.
Am I onto something? Would you participate? Would you download/buy/play the outcome?
Update: This project is now underway, and we’re full up on participants. I’m not sure what our timeframe will be, but stay tuned!
My regualar game is about to die from attrition (we’re about to go from 7 players to 1 due to moving people and babies being due soon) so I think I’d have the time to help on this.
And once completed, I can always draft an irregular group to playtest.
I’d be in, if we do this.
Sounds like a great idea! It COULD end up an unusable mess, yes, but it could be really REALLY cool, too. I think the risk is worth the reward. 🙂
Steven
It does sound like a cool idea. The biggest issue I could see is getting a team of GMs that are sufficiently on the same page. Assuming D20 (or any other game with significant character advancement), there would also be the issue of finding GMs whose groups are at the same level. Though it might also be cool to do the shared part as level independent and each GM populate the adventure with appropriate challenges that fit the theme, and do that in a shared way so that the feedback from the other GMs is still there. Now that would be a cool result. Here’s a module you can run at these 5 different power levels, and it’s been played through at each of those levels. And you could even take it a step further possible, and make it system independant (here’s a module for 3rd level, 7th level, and 15th level D&D, and 100 point GURPS, and 60%ish skills RuneQuest).
Frank
I’m in, as long as it’s d20 — ‘s the only system I know. I think it’d be cool to do, and I’ve got a group that’s prime for it — after three adventures, the setting is still very undefined.
I would love to see something like thist but disagree with the above. If we do this is should be rather generic or at lease multi stated.
I just stumbled across TT… and this is the first thing that caught my eye. However, I would DEFINATELY be into this! I was just posting on RPol about setting up a forum (& web-site) as a GM resource. So, having a ton of free bandwidth, I could set up a ‘nothing-special’ perl based Forum. However, some minor help or moderator assistance with the whole spiel would be great.
The system matters-not -for the most part- for me… as I’m fairly well versed (although I admittedly have my favorites). 😉
You can email me at my website (I just linked it because it is for a game that I’m in… and I made the site). Please forgive the frames, I was lazy. 😛
This sounds like a great idea, and something that would benefit a Forum, for discussion of different topics, as well as a Wiki for putting down the material in a usable format.
As for generic vs. a specific system, I would say you could do all the plot development generic, and then smaller groups, who play the same system, could take the material and stat it out for specific systems.
A few years ago I did an experiment with a wiki where a group of 10 of us generated material for a campaign world. It was quite interesting. It worked much better than I thought, and though no one took the material and ran a game with it…yet. It turned out some pretty interesting material, plenty for a campaign world. So I am a big fan of group generated work.
System vs. Systemless: I hadn’t considered this, but I like DNAphil’s suggestion: Pick a genre, but don’t tie the project to a single system. Stats for an individual system could be done by individual GMs, and then added to the finished product (which might result in a multi-statted product, like maikeru said).
I definitely think a forum is a good choice of venue. Blog comments just aren’t organized enough for brainstorming. I could see a wiki being very useful as well.
As far as being on the same page (Frank’s point), starting out with a one-shot seems like it would resolve this fairly well. At least with my group, we can always squeeze in a one-shot between sessions of our ongoing game. Even if it’s two sessions (chargen + background, then play), that sounds doable to me.
It might be fun to try this with a limited-access forum — IE, one that only the participants had a password to. That way the end result, after playtesting, would be a surprise for the rest of the community.
On the flipside, an open forum (no password) would encourage folks to pop in with random ideas, even if they weren’t signed up to actually run the first draft of the project.
Would everyone who has expressed an interest so far be willing to sign up for a free TT forum account? (I know several of you already have one. ;))
I’m glad this idea isn’t totally baseless. 😉 I’ll let it simmer for a couple of days, mainly to get weekday commenters involved, and then go from there. 🙂
This is an interesting idea. I’ve seen a number of threads where an idea for an adventure or a campaign has been developed. But, this takes it to the next level by committing to continue the collaborative development to a finished product.
It does, however, need to be linked to a specific system. Particularly if you are going to run it at a con.
It does sound like a fun idea. The size of the pool will be critical– too many early on will lead to people dropping because they’re not heard over the noise, but too few early on means no one’s left to finish it after attrition removes people. [I’m making the prediction based on Universalis play online and its patterns.]
Consider me in for a forum account. 🙂
I also think that a closed forum would be beneficial over a public one. As I said, if I can get a MOD or two to help (just so I don’t have to fix all the problems… though there shouldn’t be many), I’d host it. I could actually have it up and running within the next few days. It will be basic and unchanged from the original setup, but it will be functional. 😀
I also agree that we should keep whatever ideas aren’t used. After the first, who knows, we may all enjoy it so much that we want to do another!
However, I will suggest d20 as a means to publish (if such is the decision at a later time) because of the OGL. Submitting for Palladium, WW, Hero, etc, etc seems to be harder (as I know exponentially less writers -freelance and contracted- for non-d20 publications). Just a $.02 on that topic.
My last comment is on the implication of mass involvement. I have seen it both ways in projects… but prefer to have more than less. This may simply be personal pref., but I rather enjoy the diversity and input from many as opposed to the struggling of few. It would also provide an ‘inside’ play-tester base if we had more.
So, if I get a couple replies here or a few emails, I will get that board set up and will either post the link (not preferred) or email it to the individuals who would like to join.
As for bandwidth and size… I have 100GB of space and 1000GB of bandwidth (of which about 1% -more than likely a fraction of a percent- is used).
I’m quite happy to host a forum for this on TT. It fits well with the forum theme (GMing, natch), and many of the commenters who’ve expressed interest already have accounts here (or just snagged them — thanks, maikeru!).
I’m also happy to join in on the action if it gets hosted elsewhere. Nor does it have to be an exclusive — there could be several teams.
Few balls get rolling without a nudge, though, so I’m going to start a forum for the VTGE (do we need a better name? I think we need a better name) on the TT forums. It’ll be a closed forum, assuming I can figure out how to do that.
If you want access to it, and are interested in giving thie project a try, please email me at martin(at)treasuretables(dot)org. I’ll need to know your forum name, so I can give you access to the sooper seekret forum. 😉
And we’re off! Several folks have signed on, the secret forum has been created and the project is underway.
My thanks to everyone who expressed and interest and contributed ideas in the comments here, and to the folks who joined the project. We’re currently full up on participants.