2 parties one dungeon

[Subdued Wasp]

Once, way back when, I was adventuring in a cave system and found another party that the same gm had in the same location. He reasoned that if two parties were there they should both be there but simply asleep between sessions. This struck me at the time as a terrible idea and still does to this day.

The one diamond as it were is that he could run the old "it's a race, the others are hot on your heels" more or less for real but I just see too many problems.


Have any of you tried anything like this? Am I missing some beauty in his thinking or is this as bad as it sounds? The idea of showing up for a session only to be told Terry and his level 1 goblin slit my throat while I was asleep last week is just too infuriating to imagine

 

[JohnnFour]

I have run multiple parties in the same campaign and region before. But dungeons can mean collisions occur more often, which would require decisions from both parties. So I would avoid putting two parties in one dungeon at the same time.

However, I've had reports from two GMs who've done this and each said it worked great. I guess I've done it twice as well, but not in dungeon settings.

The GMs had players of both parties there for game night. One GM ran everyone in the same room but at different tables, and they would go back and forth between tables. The other GM put each group in a different room and used walkie talkies to provide more challenge.

In my case, the one time I had two different groups in the same world meet. And another time, the party split and effectively became two groups adventuring in parallel for awhile. I avoided parties being together unless the players were together.