My Online Campaigns, Part 4
I took a long break between the last online campaign and the current ones. I really didn't have a lot of time in my life for gaming and I was pretty unsure of what kind of campaign I wanted to run. Eventually, I started the GURPS WWIV campaign and suddenly everything came together. I had a good core group of players, a setting that they were all interested in, and a lot of new ideas to run with.
One of the things that I kept from my first online campaign was the individual games with the action mainly being described in e-mail (with occasional chat or IM sessions). Unlike the first campaign, this one had all of the players working on the same side and moving toward the same goal. This made it a lot easier to keep track of what was going on and even led to more than a few cross-over adventures where the various players would meet up, resolve an adventure, and then continue with their own plot lines. It made things interesting and it made it easier on the players. If Dennis couldn't participate for a couple weeks due to reserve duty, it wouldn't affect anyone else. I could devote time to the players who had the time to game and let those who needed more time relax and not feel like they were under pressure.
Eventually, I added some more to my plate by introducing a Prime Directive campaign. While the RPG side is moving ahead slowly, my original idea of having a Federation & Empire strategy game as a backdrop to the campaign kind of fizzled. Instead, I'm going in a new direction with that -- the F&E game will still be used, but more as a flavor for the RPG side rather than determining what will happen in the campaign. Of course, this may change if I suddenly end up with a lot of wargamers in the group.
As the current campaigns continue (and no doubt the number of players will change as the game progresses) I find that I am enjoying this format more and more. While I still want to get a regular group of players for an actual tabletop campaign, for now this is more than satisfying.
