Having a Cohesive Campaign Setting

There’s been a lot of hubbub lately about the new Avengers movie coming out in 2012. If it was just going to be about a team of super-heroes it wouldn’t be generating much interest. The fascinating thing is the shared universe that Marvel has been interweaving in its movies.

At the end of Iron Man, Nick Fury informs Tony Stark about the Avenger Initiative. A couple months later, at the end of The Incredible Hulk, Tony Stark walks into a shady bar and informs General “Thunderbolt” Ross that he’s putting together a team. In Iron Man 2, Captain America’s shield makes an appearance, and at one point, you see a map that has highlighted on it various important spots in the Marvel Universe, including Wakanda, New York, and the frozen Arctic where Captain America is encased in ice. After the credits, as well (SPOILER ALERT) it is revealed that Thor’s hammer Mjolnir (I correctly spelled that without the need for any Google-Fu) has been found in New Mexico. Presumably, there will be more tie-ins throughout the next few films.

This isn’t just the case in movies. Throughout the comics, characters appear and disappear from story-arcs, interweaving themselves throughout different plots. An event in The Mighty Avengers might get a passing mention in Black Panther. The cohesion is incredible.

So what’s this have to do with RPGs? Am I just waxing poetic about my love for the Marvel Universe? Partially, I’ll admit.

But what this has to say about gaming is that you really can create an epic, multi-campaign story involving all kinds of different personalities. Whether it’s Sci-Fi, Fantasy, or Superheroes, incorporating elements the players will recognize (or not) is a great way to add depth to the story.

For example: Your players have just finished a campaign in which the heroes battled hordes of dragons sweeping over the land, culminating in the death of Tiamat herself. For a follow-up campaign, begin with new heroes in the days before the dragons conquered the known lands (just before the death of Tiamat) and have the BBEG be a servant of Tiamat, attempting to resurrect her once she’s been killed by the other group of PCs from the previous campaign. If you have a friend who’s getting ready to run another campaign, give him your notes and see if he wants to run a campaign around the same major events. Now your players and his players have something to talk about, a mini Living World.

Now, you don’t have to go to this extreme, or even do anything your players will notice.

When I was running my Star Wars campaign three years ago on deployment in the Arabian Gulf, the group was playing a band of smugglers in the Rebellion era. Throughout the campaign I introduced characters from the Iron Dawn (which takes place in the Rise of the Empire era) as NPCs who are much older and now leaders of the Rebellion. My players never knew these NPCs had a past history, but by playing the NPCs with the same personalities as a group I had played with ten years prior, my players saw them as much deeper characters.

If I was running a Superhero game, I would definitely do things such as, when describing a scene say “See Danger Man Issue #47″ when referencing an event that didn’t actually happen. That would be fun.

I think there are a lot of opportunities for both GMs and players to expand the universe of their games, if you only spend a little time to do so.