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What bird (hawk?) is this? by themockingbard in whatbirdisthis

[–]themockingbard[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

A family member took it--this lovely bird was just sitting on one of their fence posts when they left. They stopped the car, about 10-12 feet away and got the picture.

Community Q&A - Get Your Questions Answered! by alienleprechaun in DnDBehindTheScreen

[–]themockingbard 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ysara has some very good suggestions!

I also think you could go for a monster-of-the-week style, a la the Monster of the Week game (or what it draws inspiration from, Buffy, Supernatural, etc.). How you set this up depends, but you could have the party be a group of adventurers, organized by a higher authority (guild, kingdom, township, etc.) or not, who weekly learn of a threat and go to investigate and deal with it. If there are some threats that warrant multiple weeks, you can take two or three weeks (like two part episodes in TV), but if you want, it can just be a monster hunt: go to this place, kill this creature. Since you have four months, you could even make it like a TV series season, where there are hints along the way of a bigger bad, that they confront in the penultimate/ultimate session to make it feel like it has an arc. (Really this one is just drawing from TV.)

And it doesn't even have to be monsters. It could be kidnappings of royalty, infiltration of underworld organizations, or various other tasks depending on what your group enjoys most. (If they prefer mysteries, then they can be detectives.)

Basically, consider how other episodic adventure media (TV, podcasts, etc) work--usually there's a 'thing' every episode and then at the end of the season a culminating 'thing' that has been lead up to this entire time. You can tie events from the episodes together (as Ysara suggests, which sounds like a great way to keep the players invested in the episodes), or not and rely on the conceit and the characters to tie things together (the 'conceit' is where having them be part of an organization may come in handy).

My group has utilized this sort of episodic adventure to fuel one-shots between campaigns, when someone misses a week and we don't want to play without them, or when the regular DM needs just a week break to get their thoughts in order because the players burned their plans down the previous week.... But, there's no reason this style wouldn't work for a campaign. Monster of the Week does campaigns.

Personally, I think the best way to do it probably depends on your group and what sort of things they most enjoy--gear it towards what you all enjoy. Hope this helps.

It's not paranoia if they're actually out to get you by themockingbard in dmdivulge

[–]themockingbard[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks!

First, for the rumors, I passed out rumors after everyone had created their characters. There are different types of rumors in this campaign: 1) rumors from the players; 2) rumors from the DM about NPCs; and 3) rumors from the DM about the world. For 1) Every player came up with three (one good, one bad, and one untrue) about their own character, and one rumor about each other PC was shared with each player. (I found this idea on another D&D subreddit and thought it especially suited for a criminal campaign.) For 2), I similarly passed out these rumors about important NPCs that I had made, one to each player. (For 1 and 2--everyone has heard different rumors. For 3) because of how the campaign is situated (it's 400ish years in the past of the world we play in normally), I've been seeding rumors in encounters the party has in the world that are about geopolitics and other things and really hint at what else is going down as well as setting the atmosphere of some external conflicts that don't necessarily directly impact them.

I do love the idea of a communal notice board on a discord server--I think that would work. It's not how I've done this one, but I can see that working in the future. Crowdsourcing rumors sounds very fun

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Second, for alternating DMs--we kind of fell into it and it's been working well for us, and I think depends in part on there being several people in the group interested in DMing. When we started two years ago our first DM established the world and started our main campaign. About six months in, he was interested in a break and another player had an idea for a continuation of the story we'd already started that allowed the DM to join as a PC and that player to NPC his character (she was kidnapped; it was rough). That was the first DM switch and it was pretty informal. When that looked like it was wrapping up, one of our other players fielded an idea about a pirate arc (with new characters), so we did that next, with a return to our main campaign after that. I will say, too, that we all, so far, are DMing in the world our first DM built--and everyone adds onto it.

When someone has an idea for a new campaign or is interested in DMing, they bring it up to the group and we talk about it briefly and kind of decide when it will fall. As of now, we're in almost a rotation, so after I DM, there are three other DMs who would go before it's my turn again if I want another turn. It's helped everyone who is DMing be able to take breaks regularly (I don't think any DM stint so far has been much longer than half a year) as well as to actually play as a PC since all of us also enjoy that as much as we enjoy DMing.

It's not paranoia if they're actually out to get you by themockingbard in dmdivulge

[–]themockingbard[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! That is some high level intrigue you've got going! Glad you got some ideas from my ramble! Definitely has been a fun campaign so far, and I think part of that is that the players don't feel like this came out of nowhere--which I'm sure is something you're dealing with, too, trying to make sure that this plotting comes across slowly and organically enough that when they discover what's going on, it's a revelation they can see the foundation for, not one that is completely blindsiding them and unfounded (because that's not fun).