I haven’t thought about this idea in years, but it popped into my head yesterday and demanded to be posted. I’ve never tried it, and it’s a bit rough around the edges, but I think it has merit.
If your campaign (in any genre) features events of global importance happening in the background, and those events have an impact on the events in the foreground, this one’s for you.
In a nutshell, have several friends run the world powers in your game.
This will make the most sense with an example. Say you’re running a fantasy RPG, and your campaign setting features five major power groups: an evil secret society, a power-hungry nation, a dominant country, a rebel group within the dominant country and a mysterious threat from another dimension.
For the purposes of our example, the PCs aren’t major players in any of those groups (though they might be, later on down the road). The power plays, backstabbing, double-dealing, skirmishes and open warfare between the different groups have a definite effect on the game, though — and that’s where your friends come in.
To run this campaign, you’d choose five friends and invite them to each run one power group. They’d have some background on the group’s goals and major personalities, and on the world in general. They wouldn’t need to be gamers, although it would probably help. (And just to be clear, none of them could be players in this campaign.)
Every month or so, you’d ask these five friends what their power groups were up to. What did the secret society do about the mole that the PCs planted within their ranks? The power-hungry nation won a series of border skirmishes with their neighbor — did they move in to claim territory? The PCs found about about the mysterious threat in the last adventure. Does that make them a target?
You’d then incorporate their answers into the campaign framework, which sounds like it would offer a major benefit: unpredictability. Even you, the GM, wouldn’t know exactly what these big-picture players were planning to do next. (And you’d retain veto power, just in case it was too off-the-wall.)
The same would go for your players, who might be more likely to be surprised by what five different people decided to do than they would if you were making all the decisions.
And if one of the power groups moved into the spotlight, perhaps because the PCs became movers and shakers within that group, you could take over control of that group. The other four groups would continue to be run by different people.
What do you think of this idea?
Update: We now have a forum just for discussing — and recruiting — faction players for your game: the Evil Overlord Recruitment Bureau.
There is a really good free pdf game, I can’t remember the name of it, Dawn of ages maybe?, that is geared towards sitting around and playing the “gods” of a world, and creating the world from scratch. If you and the five superpowers got together and played a version of this game on an alternate night, that might work out well.
You would get all the intrigue, uncontrolled background machinations, power struggles, and world background while your friends get to sit down and play another game.
If you were crafty enough (and this wouldn’t be at all easy) you could change the names and have the players from game one, be the world powers from game two. They’d catch on pretty quickly when “nashanwon” declares war in the first game, right after “kaantreeetoo” declared it in the nations game.
A friend of mine has been doing just that for the past several months with his D&D game. He’s got a group of local players that play around the tabletop and the folks that he’d like to game with, but live to far away, direct the actions of his nations / cults / guilds by e-mail.
John, if you can remember the name of that god game I’d like to check it out.
I think this a good idea, and I think that it would work great via email. This way you can include friends from around the globe and gamers from every type of culture. You can then post the monthly “results” to a blog that all can see.
That’s right, Dawn of the Worlds. We had great fun playing that game, it got a little silly though, based on the people who were playing. I’d like to get a game of that going with some people interested in doing some Machiavellian plotting, and real intrigue. It would require some ground rules.
The concept of using something like this to influence another game is great though. Reminds me of mixing first person shooter video games with Real Time Strategy video games. It could even be done with dawn of worlds as the prime game being played, and then doing one shots of events. “I send a strike team into your country to do such and such”. The player being invaded might act as the GM, or set up defenses for his country, etc, while the rest of the group works to get into the country, etc.
Birthright did this with a fair amount of structure back in 1995. Players run their domains as well as individual members of an adventuring party. The events from the meta campaign influenced the “mico campaign” of the party.
It was — and still is — tres chic. One of my favorite settings of all time.
This is a really cool idea. I was thinking this would be cool in a situation where you’ve got old friends that used to play in a group, but have moved away. By giving them control of one of the factions, they can participate in a small way.
The difference between Birthright and this idea is that in BR, the players take on the roles of both the PCs and the powers. The wrinkle here is that the players control their PCs, and another group of people run the power groups.
I like the idea of involving friends in other parts of the country. It’s a much lighter commitment than a PbP or PbeM game, but it’s still kind of like gaming.
There’s nothing inherent in Birthright that prevents others from controlling the domains and not the players. My point is that it (Birthright) already provides the structure; as the GM you just have to execute it in a way you like.
I think this is a great idea! I’ve done some similar stuff to BR, and using our own house rules for more political intrigue/strategy based RP. I have 3 different groups of gaming friends in 3 geo locals some distance apart. Using this idea, I could theoretically run the players I have locally as the PCs and utilize volunteers from the other geos for the group management behind the scenes! Its the uber-campaign!
Brilliant!
When my star Steampunk player moved back to England, I was so disappointed, I stopped the campaign (with a bang, don’t worry!)
Anyway, since seeing this idea this morning, I’ve emailed back and forth with him and am planning to ressurect the game with him calling the shots for one of the organizations in the background!
We’re both excited and glad to be “sort of gaming” together in this setting.
Martin, thanks, I owe you one!
Abulia: Gotcha. Using Birthright as the basis for accomplishing this certainly sounds reasonable. That would make it more of an actual game for the world power players, which could be pretty cool.
Izerath and Gospog, if you give this a shot I’d love to hear how it went. I suspect this idea could be polished up and turned into a pretty neat free PDF, but to really make it shine I’d need some actual play feedback.
If you’re amenable, keep me posted. ๐
I’ll do you one better: if I decide to go with this…do you want to run one of the factions?
I have at least five factions and one volunteer, so far.
I imagine you’re as busy as we are, but we only play monthly and may not start until after the holidays. Let me know and I can send you some notes on the world.
Gospog: Ooooh, that is one better! Thank you for the offer. Shoot me an email and let’s figure this out. ๐
(martin(at)treasuretables(dot)org)
I’ll admit to being a little confused by the specifics of this. I think it’s a great concept, but how do you handle the details? How do the powers know that the PCs planted a mole? How would you handle wars between factions? Are the powers that be kept seperate from each other, so their actions are worked together by the GM or do they all contact each other and do their own backstabbing and whatnot while the GM eavesdrops?
This is a pretty mutable idea, StingRay, so others might come up with different approaches.
Based on the one I originally had in mind, though, the answers to your questions are:
– The powers know what the GM tells them they know.
– Wars between factions could largely be handwaved — the GM chooses the most interesting result.
– The powers wouldn’t collude behind the scenes, except through the GM.
You could very easily go with Abulia’s suggestion, though, and run a full-fledged meta-game between the powers, using actual rules (like Birthright). Or you could allow the powers to scheeme with each other behind the scenes, rather than filtering their scheming through the GM. There are lots of ways this could go.
Since we’re discussing Birthright, if you’re interested, DON’T pick up the Birthright based Sierra on-line video game of the late 90s, The Gorgon’s Alliance. While Birthright may be awesome, the execution was bad, the engine difficult to use, and the whole work was buggy. Better to hunt down an old box set for your first taste of birthright than the video game even if it IS 1/5th the price.
Martin: Interesting. (Twenty minutes real time later.) Ah ha! I think I’ve managed to wrap my head around this. I was stuck on the idea that this is a one-email-a-week deal, wherein, after the game, the GM tells the powers what happened, the powers write back and then no more contact for the rest of that week. That, I don’t think I’d like. I saw no big picture reactions to the other powers actions, and couldn’t understand the point.
I think, though, that if you don’t want to do a full on game (which would be really cool) then something where you’re sending messages back and forth on a more regular basis would work. In fact, I might try and set something like this up in preparation for my next game. A month or two ahead of time, figure out the powers of the world, find some people to run them, and let them act and react for a little bit.
I would imagine plots would spring up with little to no need for impetus from me. The moment a power says, “I enlist the help of the PCs,” stop the metagame and begin the game.
Hmmmmm…. Cool!
Doing this as a pregame activity is a very cool idea — I like your thinking, StingRay!
If you try it out, let us know how it goes. ๐
wow martin that sounds really cool. I am inspired to use this concept in the next campaing I run, interested in being a power?
Stephan: Absolutely! I love your games, and I really miss gaming with you. Sign me up. ๐