Comments on: Parallel Stories

By: penguin133

penguin133 — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 14:41:02 +0000

Best parallel story I ever did was when our Western characters went to the Yucatan in search of the treasure buried by their ancestors, our Pirate characters! Ian Winterbottom

By: Matthew J. Neagley

Matthew J. Neagley — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 17:29:57 +0000

@Lee Hanna - Sorry I was unclear. Though all of those you suggest are good ideas, I'm referring specifically to running a game session where the players take the roles of new characters and run through an adventure similar to a recent one. @Scott Martin - I'd imagine pre-gens, and I'd just steal them from another source and maybe tweak them a bit. I wouldn't sell it per se. I'd just start a session of an ongoing campaign by handing out the pre-gens and saying something along the lines of "Today we're running a one-shot in the same setting but only tangentially related to our main story arc." It's not as though it's a common occurrence. Unless you mean "How do you sell the parallel campaign?" in which case that answer is: I have no idea. It's one of those experimental things that will either appeal to your group or not.

By: Scott Martin

Scott Martin — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 17:07:48 +0000

This is something that always sounds cool, but I don't know how I'd go about presenting it to my players. Do I run it as a one-shot with pre-gens, which is a lot of work to add to the GM in the middle of a campaign? Do you set it up as its own ongoing storyline, so the GM is now running two campaigns instead of one? The effect sounds cool, and I can imagine it working very well, but I don't know how I'd sell it or keep the prep reasonable. Any advice on those fronts?

By: callin

callin — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 15:51:55 +0000

My wife has been running two 3rd edition Gamma World games for the past year or so. Both groups are in the same setting, but with different players and characters (except for me). Both groups are engaged in the same plot: restore the orbital satellites providing atmosphere to the planet; destroy the evil mutant rats; bring technology back.

The two parties have never met face to face, but their paths have crossed. One is the cousin of another. One party left their group symbol on the ship of the other party. As the two greatest adventuring bands, there is competition as each seeks to outdo the other-one discovered 500 working robots and gained control of them; the other saved the home village of the other party from marauders.

Each group acts to help the world, trying to accomplish the same end, but each group does it in their own way.

My Blog- http://bigballofnofun.blogspot.com/

By: Lee Hanna

Lee Hanna — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 15:44:37 +0000

I'm confused. Are you advocating running separate games, with the players running alternate PCs? Or verbal cut-scenes, wherein the GM narrates someone else's story? Or a written short-story, to be distributed on paper/email/whatever?

By: Jagyr Ebonwood

Jagyr Ebonwood — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 13:31:02 +0000

A device suggested for the Cortex RPG system (which is meant to model movies and TV shows etc) is similar to this. During most movies/TV shows, the camera doesn't only follow the good guys. It may spend most of it's time with them, but every now and then we cut away to a quick scene showing what the bad guys are doing. Assuming you can handle the inherent metagaming risks, doing the same thing in your game can let the players know that they're on the right (or wrong) track, as well as getting a chance to show off particular story elements that the PCs might otherwise miss.