Last month, I brain stormed about some ways to link campaigns and mini-campaigns across several different games, settings, and systems. The idea is for each to affect the others, and for each players’ characters within the games to be in some way linked, whether by being the same person or by representing the same ideal or concept.

For example, Fred’s characters could all be the same person, “translated” to different settings and systems, or Fred could play all the characters who represent the ideal of the Trickster, from Coyote to Catwoman to the more benign versions of Loki).

In general, the games should be played to their own strengths, and with their own genre conventions. If your players are comfortable with multiple systems, moving between systems could be fun, too.

Events and themes echo across the games, and each campaign’s outcome affects the meta-story and the subsequent campaigns. Additionally, the action should escalate with each passing campaign, building toward a climax and resolution.

Generally, the player characters should advance not only within each campaign, but between them as well. You probably don’t want to keep giving the players “first level” or starter characters (as in D&D or World of Darkness), because they just can’t do enough.

The best way I can think of to keep track of character advancement is to have a group Level representing the number of “missions” (campaigns, one-shots, and mini-campaigns) the group has been on (with longer campaigns counting as 2 or 3), a brief description of each one, and the starting and ending levels (or starting power in points or template type in non-level-systems) in the game system each game used.

Obviously, this is going to give slightly different results for different groups, depending on how long the campaigns are, and how high-powered they get, how quickly. But I will suggest that new characters should enter on the same footing as established characters. There’s no point in having the new player be permanently or semi-permanently hobbled.

Adding and removing characters should be pretty much the same as doing it in a normal campaign, but with the added likelihood that they may return for different campaigns. Permanent character death is a different thing. I tend to think that it needs to be a much rarer thing, and not just happen when a character dies inside a campaign.

I like to think of “champions” or “meta-characters” being able to emotionally register the impact of getting their in-campaign characters killed. Did they have family? Was this guy so evil that you’re glad he lost his life? How responsible were you for what happened?

The “champions’” responsibility for what happens within the campaign worlds and beyond is something I find interesting, something worth exploring. In addition to getting their proxy-characters killed (or killing in-world NPC’s), they have the question whether all this interference is really best.

Is the person or entity that gives them their marching orders really one of the good guys? Are they even really understanding what they’re supposed to do? What if there is no “supposed to?” What if they’re being played? How much of this is fated? Solving these mysteries can be the central core of a series, if you want.

i think it helps to plot out the general shape of the storyline, using different campaigns, one-shots, and mini-campaigns as scenes or nodes within the escalating story. That said, I think you need to have plans for how success and failure within a given campaign affects the overall plot and subsequent campaigns. I think it’s especially important for one-shots to be truly in question, with failure being a real possibility.

Perhaps if the pulp-era adventurers don’t retrieve the Philosopher’s Stone, then it will fall to the Lovecraftian Investigators, who are significantly more fragile and less dashing. And if they fail, the stone may land in the heart of a sorcerer-king’s fortress in the fantasy setting, requiring a desperate raid or full-scale war to retrieve.

Or perhaps it will appear in the characters’ library anyway ... but other things will change, like a butterfly effect, making the opposition far more dangerous going forward. Or perhaps the costs will be personal, robbing the characters of their homes, separating them from their loved ones, forcing them to travel long distances (maybe even across time and dimensions) to be reunited.

At any rate, a simple flow chart would be a great way to help plan this. You don’t have to know everything to being with, and you don’t have to write it in pen. Things can change, but it’s easier to adapt if you have a framework to begin with.