We have a group of 5 players and a DM. All of them are committed folks who prioritize D&D night, but they also have careers that occasionally conflict. We had been having a board game night on the (roughly) one night a month we cannot gather enough to play. This is usually if either the DM is missing or 2 out of the 5 PCs.
We are looking at starting a secondary group of PCs heading into a new campaign as a backup. We will be using the Optional rule in DMG ch. 9 utilizing "Plot Points" and in particular Option #3 "The Gods Must Be Crazy" where you can swap out DMs. We would play a published campaign (Storm Giants) and have one Main Dm (me) but anyone else can take over the role at any time by spending a Plot Point. This would be with the intent that it is a backup campaign that we agree is OK to play with when some folks are missing and maybe once a month regardless to give our regular DM a break
I can go only speak from experience, but having two campaigns on the go has never worked for me. It was actually a similar situation to what you've described, where there was a core group of players that could commit to an 'every week' session, where as another couple of players could only play every few weeks.
We decided to create two campaigns - one for the 'regulars', and another that we'd play when everyone was available. It didn't work, sadly.
While it wasn't as thought out as what you've described, with DMs swapping in and out etc, investing in two campaigns just didn't work very well. The 'core' players simply wanted to carry on playing the main campaign, and weren't excited to swap to another campaign they felt less invested in. Whereas the less regular players felt short-changed by a DM that didn't put as much effort into their campaign - and players that treated it like their down-time campaign.
I DMd both campaigns, and it's true; I simply couldn't invest as much time into the casual campaign as the regular one. Running a single campaign is a lot of work, and I put a lot of effort in to preparation. Running two with the same level would just lead to burn out. Perhaps your idea of swapping DMs around could alleviate this. Also, running a published campaign as you've suggested, could help too.
In the end, we scrapped the secondary campaign, and just played other board games when everyone could get together - a bit like what you're doing now. I'd give it a go, see how it pans out, but be prepared to have players getting frustrated that they're not playing their 'main' character - or wanting to scrap their 'main' character in favour of this new campaign. Hope it all works out!
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
We have a group of 5 players and a DM. All of them are committed folks who prioritize D&D night, but they also have careers that occasionally conflict. We had been having a board game night on the (roughly) one night a month we cannot gather enough to play. This is usually if either the DM is missing or 2 out of the 5 PCs.
We are looking at starting a secondary group of PCs heading into a new campaign as a backup. We will be using the Optional rule in DMG ch. 9 utilizing "Plot Points" and in particular Option #3 "The Gods Must Be Crazy" where you can swap out DMs. We would play a published campaign (Storm Giants) and have one Main Dm (me) but anyone else can take over the role at any time by spending a Plot Point. This would be with the intent that it is a backup campaign that we agree is OK to play with when some folks are missing and maybe once a month regardless to give our regular DM a break
Has anyone ever tried something similar?
Thoughts?
I can go only speak from experience, but having two campaigns on the go has never worked for me. It was actually a similar situation to what you've described, where there was a core group of players that could commit to an 'every week' session, where as another couple of players could only play every few weeks.
We decided to create two campaigns - one for the 'regulars', and another that we'd play when everyone was available. It didn't work, sadly.
While it wasn't as thought out as what you've described, with DMs swapping in and out etc, investing in two campaigns just didn't work very well. The 'core' players simply wanted to carry on playing the main campaign, and weren't excited to swap to another campaign they felt less invested in. Whereas the less regular players felt short-changed by a DM that didn't put as much effort into their campaign - and players that treated it like their down-time campaign.
I DMd both campaigns, and it's true; I simply couldn't invest as much time into the casual campaign as the regular one. Running a single campaign is a lot of work, and I put a lot of effort in to preparation. Running two with the same level would just lead to burn out. Perhaps your idea of swapping DMs around could alleviate this. Also, running a published campaign as you've suggested, could help too.
In the end, we scrapped the secondary campaign, and just played other board games when everyone could get together - a bit like what you're doing now. I'd give it a go, see how it pans out, but be prepared to have players getting frustrated that they're not playing their 'main' character - or wanting to scrap their 'main' character in favour of this new campaign. Hope it all works out!