Speaking of management, I also wonder whether you can expand –perhaps on a future post?– on the nitty gritty of scheduling and organizing sessions with a large pool of players like yours.
Your podcast interview with Ben L. touched on this subject briefly. I think it would be super useful for aspiring open table megadungeon GMs (like me!) to learn more about your tricks and tips of organizing sessions.
A common GM complaint about the now traditional approach to D&D campaigns –the dedicated table of 4-5 players expected to show up regularly for months or years– is how frustrating scheduling can be. And how often it leads to the death of campaigns. This problem supposedly finds and antidote in the open table megadungeon campaign. But there is still some scheduling to do... How do you schedule and organize sessions with players?
I would love if you could get really specific. I mean, the questions I have in mind include:
- Do you invite all your players to play at a specific day and time, and then play with those who commit to that session? Or do you pre-select players that you think may “glue” together and invite them (I think you described an approach like this in the interview)? If you do, are they still one-off groups? Or they become stable mini-groups that always meet independently from others (in other words, how promiscuous, so to speak, are each session's group?
- How do you invite with players? Email? Discord? Calls? And do players have communication channels between sessions? Discord? General Discord chat, or small-group specific chars?
- Do you set the day and time? Or do you negotiate the day and time with players? Do you use scheduling tools like Doodle?
- How have been your experiences letting players themselves organize sessions (West Marches style)? I think you mentioned that hasn’t work so well, but why?
- And has your approach for scheduling and inviting players changed over time as the campaign progresses?
I hope that's not too specific for this substack's aim! Perhaps Ben L. should have a whole episode on Scheduling the Megadungeon... Anyway, thanks again for your great posts!
I definitely aim to tackle this subject eventually. I have a general outline in my head about the path my installments are moving in so it may be a minute until I hit that portion of the discussion around running a game.
One quick thing I will say is that my current player pool definitely has one main subgroup. I have a weekly game I have been running since 2011. Those players maintain a steady subgroup that is running expeditions within the overall frame of what I am doing. That group is centered around a different tavern than the rest of the player pool. They definitely interact and work with other players within the same setting as well as move on the same timeline but one could also look at the two taverns as to different campaigns depending on how you want to define a "campaign".
Thank you Nick, that's very interesting and intriguing. I can't wait for the installment on scheduling the megadungeon/managing the player pool and subgroups of players!
I’m enjoying this post series very much. It is helping me set up my own open table megadungeon campaign. Thank you sir!
I would like to ask you some questions about the two time management rules and something you had said on a comment to the Sept 14 post: “Neither What Fools or Twilight Age are 100% in the megadungeon. Twilight Age has had sessions as afield as to neighboring city-states, the fey realm, and the moon.”
How do you handle the end and beginning of a session that doesn’t happen in the megadungeon, e.g., in a neighboring city-state or wilderness? Do you still enforce some form of closure (something like the ending outside the dungeon rule)? How does this look like, narratively speaking? If a session ends with a group of PCs exploring a city-state, and then a week passes (in real time) before the players meet again, does that mean that the PCs stayed in the city-state doing downtime activities for a week (in the fictional time)? What if they are exploring the wilderness? Camping for a week? Or are they expected to come back to the base of operations (a small town?) at the end of the session, even if it happened in a city or the wilderness?
This all has been something I have been figuring out as we play. The fey (and similar) realms is an area that I have long had figured out. Sessions just pick up from where the last one ended. I maintain the overall campaign timeline by having time move differently between the the fey world and the mortal one. Every week passing between sessions marks the same amount of time passing in the mortal world. Meanwhile, the time passed in the fey world is just that spent in session.
Things like overland travel and journeys to other places, I have struggled with much more. I generally try to end in a "safe" place like a friendly settlement where the players can partake in downtime actions in-between sessions. This doesn't always work out which has lead to some real headaches that I haven't quite figured out.
I do find that a lot of people misrepresent the "STRICT TIME RECORD" bit either intentionally or, quite often, by literally not having actually read that paragraph. I am hardly a fan of Gygax as a designer (and absolutely not as a person), but he was right in this case. If you want a long-term campaign with loads of people operating in an open sandbox, you need to keep strict time records or else you will drive yourself insane.
It does, however, suck when the time records end up causing situations like the one you described, of having to potentially miss out on something as the time window for it passes. I do agree that it sucks, and I also agree that in a way it makes the campaign feel more "real".
As for Downtime in Zyan, it is a wonderful little zine! Great recommendation!
Thanks! Downtime in Zyan has been a real lifesaver.
I whole heartedly agree about your sentiments about Gygax and time records. I feel like I really struggle with players not always grasping how it effects my DMing to force breakdowns in the timeline. Insanity, indeed.
Speaking of management, I also wonder whether you can expand –perhaps on a future post?– on the nitty gritty of scheduling and organizing sessions with a large pool of players like yours.
Your podcast interview with Ben L. touched on this subject briefly. I think it would be super useful for aspiring open table megadungeon GMs (like me!) to learn more about your tricks and tips of organizing sessions.
A common GM complaint about the now traditional approach to D&D campaigns –the dedicated table of 4-5 players expected to show up regularly for months or years– is how frustrating scheduling can be. And how often it leads to the death of campaigns. This problem supposedly finds and antidote in the open table megadungeon campaign. But there is still some scheduling to do... How do you schedule and organize sessions with players?
I would love if you could get really specific. I mean, the questions I have in mind include:
- Do you invite all your players to play at a specific day and time, and then play with those who commit to that session? Or do you pre-select players that you think may “glue” together and invite them (I think you described an approach like this in the interview)? If you do, are they still one-off groups? Or they become stable mini-groups that always meet independently from others (in other words, how promiscuous, so to speak, are each session's group?
- How do you invite with players? Email? Discord? Calls? And do players have communication channels between sessions? Discord? General Discord chat, or small-group specific chars?
- Do you set the day and time? Or do you negotiate the day and time with players? Do you use scheduling tools like Doodle?
- How have been your experiences letting players themselves organize sessions (West Marches style)? I think you mentioned that hasn’t work so well, but why?
- And has your approach for scheduling and inviting players changed over time as the campaign progresses?
I hope that's not too specific for this substack's aim! Perhaps Ben L. should have a whole episode on Scheduling the Megadungeon... Anyway, thanks again for your great posts!
I definitely aim to tackle this subject eventually. I have a general outline in my head about the path my installments are moving in so it may be a minute until I hit that portion of the discussion around running a game.
One quick thing I will say is that my current player pool definitely has one main subgroup. I have a weekly game I have been running since 2011. Those players maintain a steady subgroup that is running expeditions within the overall frame of what I am doing. That group is centered around a different tavern than the rest of the player pool. They definitely interact and work with other players within the same setting as well as move on the same timeline but one could also look at the two taverns as to different campaigns depending on how you want to define a "campaign".
Thank you Nick, that's very interesting and intriguing. I can't wait for the installment on scheduling the megadungeon/managing the player pool and subgroups of players!
I’m enjoying this post series very much. It is helping me set up my own open table megadungeon campaign. Thank you sir!
I would like to ask you some questions about the two time management rules and something you had said on a comment to the Sept 14 post: “Neither What Fools or Twilight Age are 100% in the megadungeon. Twilight Age has had sessions as afield as to neighboring city-states, the fey realm, and the moon.”
How do you handle the end and beginning of a session that doesn’t happen in the megadungeon, e.g., in a neighboring city-state or wilderness? Do you still enforce some form of closure (something like the ending outside the dungeon rule)? How does this look like, narratively speaking? If a session ends with a group of PCs exploring a city-state, and then a week passes (in real time) before the players meet again, does that mean that the PCs stayed in the city-state doing downtime activities for a week (in the fictional time)? What if they are exploring the wilderness? Camping for a week? Or are they expected to come back to the base of operations (a small town?) at the end of the session, even if it happened in a city or the wilderness?
This all has been something I have been figuring out as we play. The fey (and similar) realms is an area that I have long had figured out. Sessions just pick up from where the last one ended. I maintain the overall campaign timeline by having time move differently between the the fey world and the mortal one. Every week passing between sessions marks the same amount of time passing in the mortal world. Meanwhile, the time passed in the fey world is just that spent in session.
Things like overland travel and journeys to other places, I have struggled with much more. I generally try to end in a "safe" place like a friendly settlement where the players can partake in downtime actions in-between sessions. This doesn't always work out which has lead to some real headaches that I haven't quite figured out.
Thank you Nick for the clarification!
I do find that a lot of people misrepresent the "STRICT TIME RECORD" bit either intentionally or, quite often, by literally not having actually read that paragraph. I am hardly a fan of Gygax as a designer (and absolutely not as a person), but he was right in this case. If you want a long-term campaign with loads of people operating in an open sandbox, you need to keep strict time records or else you will drive yourself insane.
It does, however, suck when the time records end up causing situations like the one you described, of having to potentially miss out on something as the time window for it passes. I do agree that it sucks, and I also agree that in a way it makes the campaign feel more "real".
As for Downtime in Zyan, it is a wonderful little zine! Great recommendation!
Thanks! Downtime in Zyan has been a real lifesaver.
I whole heartedly agree about your sentiments about Gygax and time records. I feel like I really struggle with players not always grasping how it effects my DMing to force breakdowns in the timeline. Insanity, indeed.
It definitely is and I feel like it is a front of DMing that I am constantly learning and growing.