Alternate Story Telling Methods - How do you do it?

[VariousRen]

My current GURPS game has 4 PC's that we are currently following, a collection of about 8-10 ex-PC's who were played for varying amounts of time (more on this later) then retired, and a whole host of contacts, allies, patrons, favors, and contact groups.

Over the last few months I have been experimenting with different ways of following the stories of the world. The main group of PC's are still the focus and take up 4 out of every 5 sessions on average, but we are now taking breaks from them for a quick 1 or 2 session look somewhere else on the continent. This normally happens when an ex-PC is doing something interesting, or has something interesting happen to them (Normally interesting enough that word will get back to the main PC's eventaully), or when one PC splits off from the group.

For example, there was a sighting of a dragon in the deep forests and swamps between two major cities, and a prominent lord of one of the cities declared that he would set out to slay it. The healer PC has a favour with that lord (he's saved the lords life, from the dragon in fact), and decides that he is going to go with him to make sure the whole dragon hunting party stays safe. The rest of the PC's didn't fancy their chances against a dragon, and stayed in town for a number of weeks to rest.

Instead of staying with the three PC's who stayed in town, everyone except for the healer made new PC's at lower point values than their current characters, and we went on a dragon hunting expedition. It was a blast, filled with PC deaths (who were replaced by the crowd of other nameless NPC's looking for a bit of dragon blood), and proved to be a great way to both introduce new potential contacts/allies/and favours and keep the story interesting.

On that topic, what strategies does everyone else use to tell an interesting and compelling story other than just following the PC's on their daily life?

[PTTG]

Oh, that is glorious.

Reminds me of a little bit of second-person character narrative I experiemented. The PCs were fairly hefty supers fighting waves of nazi goons. After a few waves, I handed out new character sheets and said "Your orders are to take out these insane ubermench! Do not fail us!" and kicked them out of a helicopter to fight their own PCs.

Most of them didn't survive long enough to reach the ground, but the one that did actually managed to get a crit with a shotgun slug against one of the less-armored PCs... that was a kill shot.

[dfinlay]

So, I've done a couple of things. I'm not sure if this counts, but one campaign world I run has several campaigns (on very different scales) going on in it, most of which have the same players. The characters rarely meet (though it's happened), but they preform actions that have ramifications on the world that in turn affect the other group and several times one group has indirecctly wound up cleaning up another's mess. There have been a few conversations betwween two characters played by the same player and there was one or two fights where a player had two characters in the fight, though so far, both on the same side.

For another game I'm starting up, players will create four characters, one mage and three "support staff", which I've instructed them to use to try and fill as many niches as possible. Then each adventure, they'll choose the character that they think is most appropriate to send. That way, in addition to the (hopefully) interesting 16-character dynamic, this'll mean that players are always playing a character that has a skillaet they feel will be useful for whatever it is they are trying to do.

[Ailluminus]

Originally Posted by VariousRen

For example, there was a sighting of a dragon in the deep forests and swamps between two major cities, and a prominent lord of one of the cities declared that he would set out to slay it. The healer PC has a favour with that lord (he's saved the lords life, from the dragon in fact), and decides that he is going to go with him to make sure the whole dragon hunting party stays safe. The rest of the PC's didn't fancy their chances against a dragon, and stayed in town for a number of weeks to rest.

That's awesome, maybe I'll steal that idea at some point.

But, no, usually I just follow my PCs day to day, usually hour to hour, keeping track of where everyone is and what they're doing.

[RobKamm]

Long ago I ran two Star Trek (FASA) games for two different groups. Every now and then I'd drop some information about one group to the other. Finally some of the players caught on and we combined the two groups for what was supposed to be a huge two-ship mission.

Never again.

[GodBeastX]

A friend of mine ran a campaign where we all started as thousands of points Grecko/Roman style pantheon of gods, doing mythological stuff.

The thing was we defined the mechanics and laws of worship and afterlife. We would also define the mechanics of anything under our purview.

Like my character was a partying/drunk god of death, and encouraged people to pour out liquor for the dead and many other things.

We then played PCs in the future who had to live in the aftermath of our jacked up world and religions =)

[whswhs]

I don't do the kind of thing you're describing; I adhere strictly to the principle that players see only things that their characters witness, and see them as their characters do.

However, I've run a number of campaigns with two characters per player; for example, I ran a Mage: The Ascension campaign where each player played both a mage, and the unawakened ally of another mage. I ran one campaign where every player had four characters—an aristocratic sorceror, an adolescent child of one of the sorcerous houses, a guard, and a lesser servant—to give multiple perspectives on the setting.