As many of us, life has made gaming less frequent and scattered my old
gamers as the years go by. I'm getting ready to restart my group in
Jan of next year and thought I'd share a few ideas/start some
discussion.
For background I run a fairly complex set of worlds with interconnects
and characters reaching back to the late 70's. My version of Arduin is
one of the realms my players can reach if they want. Multiversal
Trading is one of several big trading outfits behind the scenes and a
few of the local societies have 'agreements' with Dave's creations,
like the BLS. I'd actually started building a multiversal approach
based on Keith Laumer's books (Worlds of the Imperion, etc.) before I
met Dave at a Grimcon. I'd gone down with friends from school (Cal
Maritime) as we wanted off campus that weekend and were gamers
already. We had the first booklet with the early cover and wanted to
see what was up. Took to Arduin like a house on fire, had a great time
since.
I'd done a few emails to the games as excerpts from a local newspaper
in the past. So this time I did up 3+ pages of national, local and
social gossip sections. Added in some bulletins from the Duke and
various notices. Next time as the game gets closer I'll add more want
adds and reward notices. I put date info in, so passage of time
becomes apparent. Put it out as a .pdf to keep fonts and spacing intact.
The fun part is a lot of the politics that give any setting flavor can
be put out as background. If the players don't read it or ignore it -
not a problem. If I announce some rules on weapons carry that will
change an area (Rune Weapons, etc. in a certain town) and a few game
years later it goes into effect - surprise! Many of the hooks are
ideas I haven't developed but that may be fun. If players follow up I
can give it more detail and expand it. If they don't it's still
background, makes the campaign seem fuller and shows events happening
the players are not directly involved in. I have less work in the long
run, fewer of the really cool modules that the players never seem to
find ;-] after I put lots of work into them.
I'm a big proponent of making sure the players realize they're not the
only fish in the pond. It keeps them on their toes and adds flavor. If
you run several groups you can report events happening around the
other group, filtered as needed.
I had fun adding in some events involving a retired player's
character. He's now a major NPC and is in some political hot water.
With a cc list of a number of ex-players they can still make comments
and keep track of what's up. If they drop in for a game they start
with previous knowledge. Keeps my prep time down - I'm good with that!
I'd be interested in hearing if any of you have tried similar set ups.
I'd like to migrate to a secure web server at some point with a couple
levels of access, Lets me plan for different info access for special
backgrounds (certain religions, cult specific info, etc.).
Thoughts?