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How campaign threads will work

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How campaign threads will work

Unread postby icycalm » 17 Dec 2020 14:47

D&D has a library of hundreds of adventures, quite a few of which are masterpieces, and many of which are good to great. To my knowledge, none of them are bad. The absolute worst of them are mediocre—which means better than the best CRPG's (with one exception: Planescape: Torment).

None of us will ever get to play all of those, not even just the good ones, so that's part of the reason I am adopting a strict campaign thread policy, so that even those of us not taking part in a campaign can keep up with it, and learn what it's about and how it goes, in the manner of a comic book or TV show and so on. As a secondary goal, such threads will help the group in question keep its history and campaign goals in mind, and also help players who miss sessions catch up on what's been happening. DMs will also use these threads to communicate vital information outside the game, or run downtime for characters, and other miscellaneous tasks. In the Pathfinder Core Rulebook, email is recommended for this purpose, but a forum thread is obviously a far superior means, so this is what we'll use.

And this is how it will work.

After each session, four essential pieces of information must be posted in the campaign thread before that campaign's players can begin scheduling their next session. Unless these four pieces of info are in the thread, I won't allow scheduling discussion on Discord. So aim to have them done by Monday's or Tuesday's end at the latest, as I'd like scheduling to have at least begun, and ideally also ended (though of course this won't always be possible) by Wednesday's end at the latest, so people can plan their weekends, and have enough time to schedule 4P videogames if there won't be a D&D session for their group that weekend.

And here are the four essential pieces of info, in no particular order:

1. Overworld gets updated on World Anvil. That's my responsibility.

2. Role-playing chatlog from the VTT text chat gets posted in full. That, again, is my responsibility.

3. Video of the session from a player's POV gets posted. This should be both the link to the Twitch VOD, and the YouTube export. However, since the YT export takes a while, that's my responsibility. Someone else should post the Twitch link, and I will update their post with the YT link when I have it. Of course, check YT too when you're posting the Twitch link, and if you see the video there, post both of them at the same time.

4. One player gives a summary of the events of the session. This summary should be a minimum of a small paragraph, but can be as long as the player wishes. Moreover, more players can add their own summaries, or supplement with their posts the original posted summary. This post or posts don't need to be literary masterpieces. A simple "We went there and did this and that, and then that thing happened to us, and we were told that, and we left off at that point" will do fine. If sometimes some players want to go further than that and perhaps present the summary in-character, in the first-person, perhaps as their character's diary entry, or in any other literary manner, by all means go ahead. But it's by no means required.

These four pieces of info can be posted in any order.

This way, with the above pieces of information in a campaign thread, it will be a simple and quick matter for a follower to keep up. All he has to do, if he has a minimum of time, is read one paragraph a week! Then if he wants to go deeper, he can skim the chatlog, reading it like a novel, much faster than he would be able to watch the entire video. And if some cool battle occurred, he can skim the video until he finds it, and watch just that.

I recommend that all players participating in the universe keep up with everyone else's campaigns. I believe your experience will be vastly enriched this way, as your knowledge of the universe and all its regions and personalities and plotlines deepens. Of course, you can also ignore all campaigns that aren't yours, it's up to you.
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icycalm
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Joined: 28 Mar 2006 00:08
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands

Unread postby icycalm » 17 Dec 2020 14:55

P.S. Players can discuss the campaign in their campaign thread, and non-players can also chat about it, but these posts must not be in-game material. I.e. only the kind of comment allowed on VOICE on Discord is allowed in the threads. (Unless the DM is running downtime and so on, i.e. unless you are specifically instructed by the DM to post in-game stuff.) This goes for the Discord channels too. You should NOT discuss for example in-game tactics on Discord text channels. Leave those discussions for the campfire. Enrich the game with them, not our Discord or our forum.
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icycalm
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Joined: 28 Mar 2006 00:08
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands


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