So, it’s no secret by now that I’m running a D&D game. I believe I’ve also mentioned that I’m taking a short break from DMing to allow a friend of mine to step into the DM’s seat, and so that I can just sit back and be a player. What I may or may not have mentioned (I’m honestly not sure) is that both of these games are happening in the same world, at roughly the same time.

In the game I’m running, the players are members of an organization called the Queen’s Wardens (or just “the Wardens” for short): sort of a professional adventurer’s guild that receives funding, authority, and special dispensations from the crown in return for completing missions for the crown when necessary. During their first adventure they took on a somewhat modified version of Keep on the Shadowfell, and during the second adventure they quelled a plague in Fallcrest.

Now we’re at the beginning of my friend’s adventure, and it’s a little bit different. We’re all members of relatively primitive tribes, or we’re people who live in the surrounding area. The game takes place in a remote part of the continent, relatively far from the Demesne (where my game is set), and not nearly as advanced, either technologically or magically. We’ve all been called together for an Allthing, a gathering of all the various clans and tribes to deal with a problem.

For those who are playing in the game right now, spoilers follow. I’ve written said spoilers in white, so you’ll have to highlight the text to read it.

The problem that we’re dealing with is an invading army, and that invading army has designs on the Demesne. Our characters just happen to occupy territory between the invaders and their real goal. In all likelihood, our characters will win some small victory but will not repel the invaders on their own. The invaders will likely march through our tribelands and attack the Demesne. And here’s the cool part: that’s going to happen in my campaign, when we go back to it.

Not only that, but I’d really like to have the characters in my campaign hear about, or even meet, some of the characters from my friend’s campaign. I’m also toying with doing a short series of adventures where the players play people on the other side, sleeper agents sent by the invading army to pave the way for their invasion.

What’s nice about this is that it underlines something that I’ve been trying to make clear since day one: this is not my world and my game, it’s ours. I’d like to encourage my other players to run their own mini-campaigns in the world. I’d also like them to help flesh the world out in other ways, by coming up with places that their characters are from, or people they know, or organizations that they are or were a part of. I really like the cooperative world-building aspect of RPGs, and I’m hoping that more of this kind of thing happens in the future.

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