I've noticed a big gap in the Epic game session realm when it comes to good tools for enhancing the gameplay. I've seen attempts, but nothing on the level of what it could be.
This past weekend, I was a part of an Epic session and validated a feature set on the app I'm building which resulted in a response of "This is perfect" from everyone that night (including the admins running the Epic).
When it comes to Epics, an easy way to ensure everyone is having fun is to keep the interactivity of all groups high. Secondly, make something positive out of the negative situations. For example, there was a feature we added this weekend to which if someone failed a task, they had to donate X dollars to a charity that was the focus for the event itself. I found this was a really fun way to enhance the game play to make something positive out of negative situations. Basically, people were still having fun rather than getting upset because it resulted in philanthropy. Obviously, anyone could also donate at anytime - but you get the gist. More smiles and laughter than disgruntled faces.
This is one of many examples I see that works really well. Additionally, I'm happy to announce that r/nurl will support Epic game sessions in our upcoming release which you can read about on our blog.
If you are interested in were we are going and the vision to make playing TTRPG easy for everyone (including people on the spectrum or ADHD), you can join the waitlist and get early access to the app before we publicly launch: https://nurl.website
I hope this brought some "inspiration" to all the DM of DM's that love hosting Epic game sessions and happy adventuring!
Great question! Games like D&D have a special play type called an "Epic" (we call it "Mutli-group Campaign" in Nurl) that is basically a group of groups. It's really fun to play if you can find one. Some local game shops where we are located host them every so often. Essentially, you have a DM that runs it basically as a narrator who hands off to the group DM's every so often. All the groups play individually but also in a co-op way that creates opportunities where one group's actions may affect another group. It's pretty cool.
Interesting. I've heard of that sort of thing before. I dimly remember a tale from a world of darkness crowd doing this in the early 2000s, and having a lot of "wait what?" pauses because one group was really set on keeping a low profile and the other was not.
I can't imagine getting that many people to actually show up and remember the plot, but I guess some people are out there!
I haven't been interested in DND style games as much lately, so this also might not be for me for that reason, too.