The Campaign: Running Multiple Parties

(Part Four of a series. Parts One, Two, and Three build on this.)

In the old days, before the Internet, most campaigns had issues with multiple active parties for one simple reason: one man, running one campaign, only had so much free time to devote to having players around the table.

You'd rarely encounter campaigns with multple parties outside of a club environment because it took a club to make that viable, which again relies on the precedent of Braunstein to explain why that worked.

In a club environment, the Referee was The Man In Charge. Sometimes he arbitrated action at the table, and sometime he delegated that task to someone else that he could trust to handle the job, much like a real general or admiral would do. A big weekend would come up, with action going in in different theaters, and the Referee could not personally handle all of it so he put some other guys in charge of those tables while he handled one and would coordinate results later.

Groups of players on their own were more like guerilla cells, barely able to keep their own operations going nevermind orchestrating multi-front manuevers. At most you'd have new cells break off from existing cells, but all operating separate and distinct from one another, leading to all sorts of issues down the road as the clubs faded away (mostly due to Boomers failing to keep them going).

With that club environment gone, and the publishers doing sweet fuck-all to fill in the gaps, the guerilla cell paradigm became the norm for no other reason than because (a) that is what one man could handle without dysfunction in more important affairs and (b) there was nothing and no one saying otherwise- not even the big convention events.

That changes. Now.

Making It Practical To Run Multiple Parties

The Internet made possible a new version of the old club structure with the rise of online communications technologies.

It is that structure which makes multiple parties viable to play. If it cannot be done in person then technical substitutes must be employed- and they exist now.

Nevermind virtual tabletops, streaming, or video; focus on Voiceover Internet Protocol services such as Discord.

I mention that one by name because it's free, it's widely available (including on mobile) so it's supported, it has both voice and chat features, and it's already got dicebots sorted out; whatever you want to run, you can run on Discord using nothing more than a chat channel, a voice channel, and a dicebot.

Discord has one other feature, which is a means to control what is seen/heard, by way of the Role function. All the server admin needs to do is to define one or more Roles for players in the campaign. This acts as a Security Clearance; those Roles not cleared to see/hear certain things are not able to do so. Direct Messages between users also exist, for when communications must be one-to-one.

If you do not use Discord, your substitute needs to have similar functionality.

(For all you folks who prefer to play in person, don't worry; keep reading.)

The idea here is that this Discord server is both your campaign information clearing house and your game room. There's a channel for posting session reports, a channel for the dicebot, channels for each theater of operations, and at least one voice room (preferably more). The Referee has a Role defined for himself, and a near-identical Role defined for any subordinates he designates.

Now running multiple parties in the same campaign becomes easy. The Referee can run sessions from anywhere so long as he can access Discord and get to the server, and thus the scheduling issue is reduced to "When can everyone get into voice chat?" His need for subordinates is greatly reduced; most won't need them, but those who do will appreciate that he can easily grant them the necessary access.

The ability to track the movements of characters in the campaign, and keep them where they are easily seen by those who need to know, is now easy for users to accomplish. Having this function is necessary for when parties come into conflict and one begins moving against the other.

All of this is prelude, because running multiple parties means running multiple sessions, and removing as many barriers to making that practical is just competent management.

Making The Game Come Alive

You need multiple locations to operate in, and you need a lack of transparency on what characters can know about what the others did. This can be done with having one theater of operations, but multiple locations of interest therein. It can also involve multiple theaters. In time, both will appear. So long as a party can (a) figure out what other parties are doing and (b) interact with them as if dealing with NPCs of interest, you're on the right track.

Having multiple locations, even multiple theaters, helps with keeping up interest over all- especially for the Referee. At the cost of some additional administrative work, he gets to see the effects that having competition between adventuring warbands--eventually competing factions, once we scale up to the Domain level of play--has upon the campaign as one group sees their objectives advanced while one or more others are hindered, hobbled, or thwarted entirely.

You, as Referee, will want to keep play moving when in play. You're doing this at least twice over an interval; you don't have time to waste. Require that the players show up with a course of action decided upon; they commit before the fact, and that's what goes down. If your sessions are short, hammer procedure; focus on the results, on the substance. Less hamming it up, more getting it done; this is a wargame, not Theater Kid Hour.

This will become more important after characters get out of the early levels and careers start taking off big time, meaning that faction leaders can approach them to do things for them like take on a notorious monster in its lair in return for access to some necessary NPC or resource.

After two or more parties, especially in the same theater, are in action for a while they're going to start stepping on each others' toes. Seeing this come about, which is what all that tracking of movement and time spent does, means that the players from the get-go are the ones driving the campaign's development. (Couple this with player-controlled factions, doing the same thing at the top-end of the scale for action, and you have a game that's come alive.)

Then it's just a matter of time before the parties come to encounter one another, and that's when the big magic payoffs hit.

Playing this way online is very easy.

But in-person, it's less convenient. Less, but not at all impractical. It does lean hard on scheduling being handled as if real (big) money were on the line and maintaining that a place to play is locked down beforehand; this is why the club was as successful as it was- scheduling time and having a place was already sorted. If you're that ambitious, go for it; what worked before will work again.

All the caveats for online play apply; you'll want to focus on getting shit done over all else, especially if your time in-meeting is short, and you're going to need everyone to be focused on the task at hand. You, or your subordinate, need to keep records of what went down; record it with your phone if you must, but keeping written notes and then putting into an After Action Report as soon as possible is better.

The Cost

Time.

You're either running two or more sessions per interval, or you're coordinating with two or more others who run what you don't and you get reports from them so you can update campaign records--maps, calendars, etc.--and administer consequences (rewards and punishments alike). You may lean on those subordinates for the latter function also.

More consuming, however, is the administrative aspect. That's why I hammered Discord above; having something that's easy to set up that handles your communications as well as your record keeping, is accessible on mobile, and can be configured to filter information from those that ought not to have it greatly relieves that adminstrative workload for only an evening's setup beforehand.

Mindset.

You, Referee, may have internalized the wargamer mindset. For a while yet, many of those who come to your table will have not; be ready to deal with this, first and foremost by reframing their expectations of what is required of them, and how things in the campaign work. Yes, even those who may be fine with AD&D1e may not quite grasp that the example combat in the DMG is not an outlier. The Braunstein foundation is evident from 1st level; most have just been taught wrong, and it takes time to unlearn that and accept that this is a wargame with fantastic adventure elements.

Don't be surprised to see some freakout reactions when those folks finally get that this game allows, even encourages, Player vs. Player interactions. Be ready for it, be firm, and tell them to reroll and try again.

Oh, and as the successful level up and move into Name Level all this becomes Braunstein for truth.

Some thoughts about that tomorrow to finish the week.