Often with the things I run there is a general theme that repeats. I like Atlantis. I like powerful figures working in the shadows. I like giving the PCs something to do. I like a metaplot in the background of all that so the world feels alive. I like lots of NPCs. Up until about 2016 I was a GM who ran one game and avoided online play outside of playing with friends I’d known for two plus decades. But in 2016 that changed. Things were easier to do with VTTs even in person and I started looking around for what else that I as a game designer and GM could do. When games are how you make your living you need to play them. It’s like a fiction writer who does read or a chef who only ever eats fast food. You need to be involved in your element to understand it. So late 2015 I decided (after consulting the Muse) to do something bold. Something potentially nuts. I was going to run multiple gaming groups through the same campaign and have those campaigns be interconnected with one another. It was gonzo. I’d start with four groups plus my face to face group and go from there. And it would be supers – one of the hardest things to pull off in GURPS. It would be a speculative look at superpowers that were at least partially realistic with a nod to iron age comics and holding the hope and promise of the golden age. The name? AEON.
It was one of the dumbest things I’d done up to that point. My gawd the implications did not hit me until I stepped on them and the Thought Rake hit me flat in the face Sideshow Bob-style. But I learned. I learned fast. First, at that time running five games per week was … a bit beyond me. I just didn’t have enough experience in keeping the timelines straight, the PCs on point, and the plot moving. So I trimmed it down to three teams 1/week and two teams 2/month. Still too much, but I made it work. I ran over a hundred sessions and then packed it in. New campaign. Who dis? I’d come back to it a few years later and ran another forty-ish sessions this time with only three teams a week. MUCH better. Then I let the fields of AEON set fallow for a bit.
And now I’m back. It always pulls me back (it and my urban fantasy campaign the Chronicles of Ceteri are heavy on my mind as is the previous campaign about demigods, A Thousand Tiny Gods). So I’m back over three years later (we started back up in July 2022). I’ve learned much about gamemastering multiple groups. My skills with the VTT have vastly improved. I’ve learned to delegate tasks to members of my group as needed. I’ve picked up a adversary to help share the workload. I started off small: B-Team and C-Team and after a bit of maneuvering got them running good. Then work got insane and then the holidays and I had to pause all games. Gaming was a tad sporadic and then, suddenly. We were back. I even decided to start a third group (E-Team). I took on some new people. Everything was great. So here I am staring at the screen and considering where to go next. What should I talk about next? What would interest people? I still want to start back up a fourth team (A-Team), but that’s a bit in the future. That team likely wouldn’t meet except every other week unlike the other three weekly teams. I do know that this time I’m ready. I’ve created methods, procedures, and rules to keep everything together and to keep the players’ collective eye on the ball. This time we’re going to tell one helluva a story together.
The Initial Plan
Like last time I spent a bit of effort in preparing the resumption of the campaign by working on many new characters (Most of B- and C-Team are just completely different groups now for instance). I’d also established some different things that I had initially decided. For instance, parallel timelines were now going to be a thing as well as the dimension between them. I also decided to create entities that have pocket dimensions between timelines.
So my initial goals this time around:
- Interleaving plots between multiple teams. FOR REAL THIS TIME. Multi-threaded arcs were going to be planned from the beginning and moving from there.
- Perform as much cross-pollination between players and teams as possible.
- Create and reuse as many NPCs between teams as possible.
- Revamp the setting bible to correspond to new thoughts, ideas, and the general new direction.
- Recruit players and think tank members to specific tasks that I can delegate out to them.
- Create a wiki and fill it with all kinds of information for cross-linking later
The Execution
I’m allotting myself time as follows for getting the campaign back in order:
- 400 hours to get the setting bible into good order. I’ve spent about 40 hours on it so far.
- 200 hours to get all the NPCs and PCs written up and updated as we go.
- 100 hours just for mapping relationships within the setting.
- 100 hours just for mapping out the story arc vand including as much backstory from characters as possible.
- 800 hours just for running four groups on a one-year basis.
Obviously, much of this would need to be done iteratively and as I ran the campaign thus the first tasks to be completed would be the ones that kept the game going (e.g., session recaps, updated NPCs, etc.). Next, would be the player-facing ones (e.g., traits and gear), followed by the world’s/setting’s information. Everything else would be as I had time. Optionally, farming it out to those who already knew about my vision of the setting would be possible. More eyes make things much more betterer in the long run. There are people I trust with the work more than others, but that doesn’t mean we can’t contribute and make things more diverse than I otherwise could alone.
Potential Strings
In the original AEON plotz file there were things that I decided to use now…but having already happened. Why? Because it makes sense for them to have occurred over the time period. AEON 1.0 and 2.0 have a more robust outlook on things. 3.0 is going to be a bit darker. Not by much, but enough. The PCs are going to have to be the rays of light this time. The narrative is going to be much tighter as well. Now, I know some of you reading that are saying, “Oh lawd, he’s gonna railroad them!” No. I’m not. I’m going to give choices and then haunt the players with any bad ones they make. That’s not railroading that’s called actions have consequences. Now, in 1.0 and 2.0 I more or less abided by that for random things and 1.0 was a bit railroad-y at first because of the nature of the campaign. 2.0 was less so. And 3.0 is going to be somewhere in between. So what else is up with the narrative? Well, like since 1.0 there will be a metaplot going on in the background. The players can interact with it or not as they choose. Not interacting means it will go along a predestined path, interacting with it results in it change. It’s not a novel trick for gamemasters and huge names in the gaming world have used it forever with their products. Palladium, White Wolf, etc. were famous for using the metaplot to drive sales and you know what? It worked. Why? Because people like shared stories. It was a macro effort that got played on a micro scale everywhere. AEON 3.0 is going to really drive that home this time. So what’s the plan?
- Background Ties for Players: All of the players have made interesting backgrounds for their characters (a requirement for me for even joining the campaign). I want to more firmly utilize those backgrounds. At least one tie per player (and more is better).
- Historical Events from Player Actions: AEON 1.0 and 2.0 had lots of things happen. I want to draw on those more. Maybe 3-5 ties from previous campaigns if possible.
- Metaplot: From day 1 of its inception there has been “this is stuff going on in the background of the campaign” for AEON. I have a firm idea of what the current metaplot is and where it will lead.
- Chunks of (Accumulating) Plot: AEON (and most of my games) use a “season” when talking about things that have happened. It’s just like a TV show season and a really long “milestone” in DnD speak. I like this method a lot, but I want to break it up into “story arcs”. Each season is probably between 16 to 24 sessions long and each session is 3-4 hours long. Each story arc will probably be between 6-8 sessions so each season has 2-3 story arcs and I like that symmetry. It also lets me put things in good stopping points and then moving between them as needed.
Picking Over the Bones
I think overall that’s more or less what I want out of AEON 3.0. The ideas are all sound and in the end we’ll see how it works. For now, I have a plan and that is all that matters when doing something this complicated.