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Ultimate Co-op

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Re: Ultimate Co-op

Unread postby icycalm » 30 Nov 2021 09:48

I have some exciting news to impart.

I've started methodically researching all the Pathfinder campaigns. Mostly to build the unlocking tree, but for other reasons too.

One very interesting subject I just solved is the in-game time it takes to finish these campaigns. The average seems to be a few months, but many of them can take a year or two. I am talking about the IN-GAME calendar.

So typically, you'll finish a book (there are six per campaign), and then the characters will have weeks or months off, if they want them. For example,

Hell's Rebels and Hell's Vengeance are supposed to start in 4715 and to culminate in 4717.


Kingmaker could quite easily cover a decade, though there isn't a canonical timeframe that I know of.


Skulls & Shackles, definitely.

With all the ship travel you can do, that can take months to travel from the [REDACTED] to [REDACTED], for instance, this one can take several years in game, easily. We just finished book 3, and are on campaign day 379. And if you have a crew, you have lots of item creation downtime while sailing.

Kingmaker is specifically designed to last years. Especially if you use the kingdom building and maintenance rules. The books all specifically give you space to do several months of kingdom building without adventuring or forwarding the plot. This allows for lots of item creation downtime.


There's more where that came from, but I won't quote or link more, you get the picture.

So I am starting to form a picture of how cross-party co-op might happen. Basically, whenever a group finishes a book from a campaign, and there is a long gap until the next book, I can allow them to survey the overworld and look for trouble spots they can travel to and help out. I can even hand this to the groups themselves, so that if a group feels like it's in trouble it can put a symbol like say "!" on the map, and that will tell the other groups that they want and welcome help.

This also solves the problem of the travel time. Because normally, travel time between groups will be at least weeks, and sometimes months. So if a lone player wants to jump between groups, that means he might have to spend months or more of REAL TIME on the bench, just waiting for his character to get to his destination. I could throw some one-shots culled from magazines in-between, but they're probably tough to find for a lone character, and would be a poor substitute for a true campaign anyway. A sprinkling of them is good, but it wouldn't suffice for someone for months. However, if the group has just finished a book, and has months ahead of it of downtime, and the group they want to join is AHEAD in time at least a few weeks, then the travel can happen instantaneously. In that case, I can also easily drop in a one-shot or two in-between, because the WHOLE party is travelling, so I can find one-shots for an entire party easily. Even more interesting though is if the party splits to go aid two different parties. After all, most parties that are in trouble might need one or two characters to help out and probably not a full party, unless they done messed up something fierce. So splitting up would make sense then. It would also make the characters feel more real, having different desires and plans instead of being essentially married to each other.

The problem is how to get them back to the original location to continue the campaign. In most cases, the characters aren't even supposed to know that the campaign will be continued. The book ends and they think the matter is over, and they go on with their lives, and suddenly, a few weeks or months later, something new happens and reignites the campaign. But this presupposes they are in the area. If they are in the other side of the world, they wouldn't even know anything happened. And it would feel very artificial to pull them back for no reason on some schedule they aren't even supposed to know.

So the first part of the idea would enhance the realism immensely: being free to travel the overworld to trouble spots on completion of an adventure book. But it's hard to see right now how to get the players back and on track. This is what I need to work on.

One thing that might help is establishing some roots in the campaign location, so they have reason to return. In this scenario, they are just going off on another adventure simply because there happens to be none back home. But on completion of THAT adventure, they long for some rest back home, so they go back.

Another thing would be if the trouble spot is close by. I am thinking of the Varisia groups we have, that I think might be a week's ride way, or something like that. It would make perfect sense for the Sandpoint crew to want to check out Korvosa, and for the Korvosa group to want to take a break from the busy urban setting and chill out in the Lost Coast. I am not saying these particular campaigns WILL have long breaks, or any breaks at all. I am just giving you a hypothetical. If the groups are close, it should be very easy to accommodate all kinds of cross-group interaction with no loss of verisimilitude. In fact, the traffic will enhance it, which is the whole point. But for long distances, the realistic, believable options will be few and far between. Which is why it would help to get some more groups in the world, something which I plan to actively encourage by various means. Another option would be for the groups themselves to be cognizant of this, and try to pick campaigns close to each other. Keep that in mind for next time your group is at the campaign selection map.

Things do get better at higher levels when flying and teleport come into play. So there's that too.

I'll keep thinking on this, but it is already pretty clear I think that you can't rely on a simplistic rule. You will have some rules, but they'll have to be applied very carefully depending on the overworld circumstances. And often, this opportunity for cross-group interaction will be closed. But the rare times when it's possible, it should be thrilling.
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icycalm
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