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I recently posted a question about starting two different campaigns. And, a wonderful person suggested doing a story where each groups choices effects the other group.

Here is my current idea. It is set at the beginning of the Jedi Order, with very few Jedi as they have just started their appearance. One group of adventurers has been assigned to locate 4 different Jedi Light saber Crystals, that will create a balance in the force. The other group is also assigned to find 3 different Sith artifacts, to gain knowledge about the enemy that has appeared.

My plan is to have one of these groups of Jedi secretly be Sith, and are wanting the artifacts to gain power.

Anywho, any ideas would be great! I really need help on how to create situations where decisions are made that effect the other group. Thanks for any help!

Cool setup! In the games I'm running for two groups set in the same universe, I also have one team who pretty clearly walks on the light side and one team that...well, doesn't. One thing that can be tricky in these cases is to keep the teams from directly engaging one another (at least until the end of the campaigns...a finale where the two teams finally met and fought one another after dancing around each other all game could be pretty fun, assuming all your players are down for it!). To that end, I think there should be some sort of bigger threat on each end than what's posed by the opposing team. For instance, maybe there's some team of Jedi tasked with hunting down the Sith that becomes a big problem for the Sith team when they discover the Sith team's secret or get a little bit too close to them, or maybe there's some more primitive dark-side force user interested in stealing the crystals or artifacts from the Jedi.

One good way to have one team's actions affect the other team might be to think about the way various factions have their forces distributed. Maybe the Sith end up taking out a small Jedi outpost that discovers their secret, which means that Jedi Council has to call the other team away from their mission to fortify a certain position until they can send more permanent reinforcements. Another fun trick I like to use (probably too frequently) is integrate characters from one group of PCs' backstories into the plotlines of the other group. Finally, having the groups drop by places recently visited by the other group makes it pretty easy to show how one group's actions affect the other group, even if the consequences are primarily flavorful and don't affect the plot too much.

One warning I will give you right off the bat:

Make sure you have a good long talk with both groups and get their buy-in, and let them know that this is going to be something of a larger commitment than a normal game. If one group dissolves, it's going to be a little bit harder for the second group to continue on then it would be if you were running two separate campaigns. I did a long-spanning game with the players playing five characters over the major eras of the timeline, and despite having this talk with the players, I had two people pull out suddenly after a short hiatus, which forced me to have to fold the entire game, because there wasn't any rebuilding when there's that much already invested into the story.

I'm not trying to warn you off of the idea, because it's a great idea, you just have to make sure the players understand what you are trying to do with this.

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This goes not only for "buy-in" to keep both games running, but also to ensure that none of the players take the other group's actions as a personal affront, particularly if one group deliberately takes actions they are fairly certain will hose the other group over. In fact, while the idea sounds cool, running two antagonistic groups with opposing end goals has a very high chance of blowing up in the GM's face. I saw this happen with a Shadowrun campaign, and the end results were not pretty.

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If it works though it can be the stuff of legend. Played in a pretty long running Shadowrun game actually where two groups playing played rival gangs. The groups knew they were playing duel campaigns but didn't really know each. Half way through the campaign one of the players character on Gang A died, and he got pissy and bowed out. The group ended up looking for another player to fill the slot. So guess what. A player on gang B took his character and went undercover in Gang A. As the campaign went on espionage became wipe spread. The undercover player became exposed, switched sides and became a double agent. At the end of the campaign when both games met and finally squared off no one knew where any loyalties lay. It was a chaotic scene but it was EPIC.

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my biggest piece of advise would be not to have one group the 'leader' with the other following. Saw another Dual campaign where the 'hero's' constantly chased the 'villains' and it didn't work well. Make sure that both groups affect each other rather than one constantly dealing with the aftermath of the first.

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