Welcome to the first day of your internship at Evil Overlord Inc!

Howdy doodles potential lackey! I am currently running 5 D&D campaigns running side by side together in the same world and campaign setting. Allowing large numbers of players to Sandbox around in the same world and have cascading decisions that affect other people's campaigns has completely changed how I view D&D and role playing in general. Its a completely immersive experience with a large group of people in a way that an MMO could never allow, in that your decisions actually have major benefits and repercussions in a world that changes week to week. So far we've discovered the more people exploring the world and experiencing interesting stories, the better the experience everyone has. Which lead us to increase the number of groups from 3 to 4, and just recently to 5.

I am the sole dungeon master handling every campaign and don't have the time to take on any more groups, but we would still like to grow our community. I was introduced to a style of campaign called the "Westmarches Style" and was fascinated by it. The more I researched it, the more I came to understand it would not fit the type of experience I aimed to bring to people. But it did inspire me to start working on a new style of campaign based on the Westmarches idea. I am putting together the bones of the concept and am looking for Dungeon Masters who would like to join in the endeavor. So with that out of the way, allow me to answer some questions that might pop into your mind as you read this...

What does the campaign style need to be capable of handling?

1. Cabals of Villains: while all the 5 different campaigns are experiencing in-depth emotional stories, there is a meta-narrative moving the world in the background as different factions of villains clash to achieve their goals.
2. Living Active Gods: In our campaign setting the gods live on the material plane and have various goals they're trying to achieve which explains why they're not out solving the adventurer's problems.
3. Calendar: As players do things in certain parts of the world on certain dates, other players moving throughout that region at a later time will see the effects of it.
4. Persistent NPCs: When player characters leave a town, the NPCs left behind still have goals and things they wish to achieve and continue to affect the world and campaigns.
5. Civilized World: In our setting, majority of the world is civilized and a lot of the excitement comes from political thrillers and the motivations behind wars and how a town became over ran with monsters.
6. Story with Stakes: At the heart of D&D is collective story-telling. The players and the dungeon master are working together to tell a great story. Penultimate, I'm not aiming for this campaign style to be just about rolling dice and grabbing treasure.

Do you have ideas on how to accommodate all those things?

Yes. Vaguely. I know I will need more than just myself to Dungeon Master. It would be an entire community of people, players and dungeon masters. Much like the Westmarches style, a player OR a dungeon master could say "I want do a campaign exploring this [aspect of the world]." Then they could begin putting together a group within the parameters of our campaign style. Those parameters are kind of boring to discuss here but I would be happy to go in depth in discussion with this with anyone willing to take on the burden of DM.

So if I join what do I have to do?

Long answer short: be willing to talk to me. But currently we have a big online wiki with all of our setting's information in it currently. If anything on the wiki excites you as a concept for story telling, just ask the player base if anyone wants to play a campaign relating to _______. Likewise, if any players ask for a campaign on a specific piece of the world, be willing to run that. Currently though, if you joined as a Dungeon Master right now you would not have any responsibilities. We are in a transitional period trying to figure this out.

This sounds like an interesting idea and I want to join in, what do I do?

That's great! If you are a player, you're free to jump in our ranks but we don't have any slots open right now for playing in a campaign until we pick up some more Dungeon Masters willing to run sessions. If you're a DM who wants to help build this campaign style or even run a campaign in our persistent setting and community of players, please post here or hop on our Discord! Tell me about your DM'ing style and we can dive more in-depth on this subject!

Thank-you everyone for those who read through this post in completion. I look forward to playing d&d and telling great stories with you in the future! 

would you be willing to accept new players that only have the basic rules handbook?

Yes, I love teaching and playing with new players, dunfeon.