I've been running a game of D&D for 4 years now, and if there's one thing I've definitely noticed as a DM in my late 20s/early 30s (I turned a third of a century yesterday, as in 33 1/3, so I think I might be in my mid-30s now, which is terrifying) is that the biggest obstacle to D&D is adult schedules (especially because I've got a bunch of actor friends who have nothing remotely resembling a 9-5, 40 hour work week - as if that's even a normal thing in this day and age.)
So my goal is to try to design a campaign (likely not to start for a while) that is built to accommodate a rotating cast of characters.
I've been playing a fair amount of Adventurer's League (two tier 2 characters and a number of tier 1s) which is mostly built around single-session adventures (though I also just got back from session 4 of Descent into Avernus. We are not in the Hells yet but at least we've discovered a diabolical plot by this point.)
Taking inspiration from this, my proposal is the following:
Each player is going to roll up a level 1 character. Every character has to belong to a guild, but I'm going to say people can pick whichever they want - even if there are duplicates (play the character you want is my philosophy.) I'm going to strongly encourage people to take the guild background affiliated with their chosen guild (like Dimir Operative or Boros Legionnaire,) but if they are playing an unusual role in the guild (for example, if they're one of the few Dimir who operate openly) I'll allow people to take custom backgrounds.
Race options will be pretty open. I'm going to encourage players to play the races mentioned or premiered in Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica, but we'll also allow reskins of existing races (Aarakocra for Aven, Tritons for Merfolk, Tieflings for Azra, Warforged for sentient Golems, etc.) as well as a homebrewed/altered version of the Ixalan/Zendikar Vampire race from the Plane Shift articles (skewing more toward the Ixalan verison, but with Blood-Drinkers and Mind-Drinkers as sub-races.)
And every class option will be open (possibly even UA options that didn't get published if they look ok to me.)
Players will level up after each session, but at first there will be a cap at level 4. Because we won't be sure who can play each time, we're going to hold that cap until most of the players have reached it.
However! While players can try out a different character and guild while they're capped (or switch at any time of course,) those who keep playing their level 4 characters will continue to amass renown with their guild (or guilds, if they're a Dimir Operative.) Along with treasure and such, this will give them an incentive to keep playing (other than, you know, the fun of it) even if they can't level up.
Then, once we hit a certain number of people at that level, we'll level up the whole campaign. Everyone goes to level 5, and we start the process anew, now doing tier 2-appropriate content.
Story-wise, I'll be keeping it mostly episodic, particularly in the early levels. The party will be a task force organized by the Office of the Guildpact, and generally I'll build adventures in which the antagonists are probably members of guilds the players are not part of (though not all antagonists must be fiendish plotting villains - we could easily have mishaps in Izzet or Simic labs where rogue Weirds or Krasises - Krases? - get loose.)
Likely if this campaign is popular, I'll weave in a larger story - probably eventually having the players travel to other planes of the Magic multiverse (Innistrad feels like one I'd be very happy to check out.) Also, while I could go the canon route and do the whole Nicol Bolas/War for the Spark story, but frankly, I think I'd have a lot of fun working in another classic Magic villain - the Phyrexians. (Really curious to see when they come back. I mean, New Phyrexia really set them up to be a new force to reckon with.)
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