1 Campaign, 2 Parties, 3 SAME PLAYERS.

[mlangsdorf]

I ran a multi-year fantasy campaign where each player controlled 2 characters. The characters communicated with each other and each player could choose which character to take on each adventure.

It was a dungeon-delving, diplomacy, and mass army battles game, so there were roughly two teams: the generals and diplomats team, and the dungeon delvers. But both teams got caught up in situations where they had to fight mass battles, negotiate treaties, or explore dungeons, and membership of each team varied a bit and characters sometimes moved between teams briefly.

I hadn't intended for each player to control 2 characters, but my players insisted and it worked pretty well. So I think what you're doing has merit and can work.

You have two entirely independent groups with fixed membership, so it should mostly be a pretty standard experience. As you said, you're running the same campaign for two different groups that just happen to have the same players.

The only thing I'd recommend is subtly providing different views of the same information to the two groups. If group 1 knows they're next to Grimtooth Mountain, group 2's maps should have Grimtooth Mountain in the wrong location, so if they set out for it, they still have an appropriately hard times reaching group 1.