Multi-session play presents the team with a great challenge to overcome, one which will tax your empowered characters to their limit. The framework presented for Jackrealms Dungeneering presents the dealer with a means to track progress between sessions and for the team to gain power as they explore.
Each dungeon the dealer presents to the team will have two stacks: the Encounter Stack and the Environment Stack. Each stack reflects the presence of a certain kind of threat within the dungeon, and the dealer will determine these while they are preparing the dungeon for their players.
The team may not have cleared every stack by the end of a session, especially if multiple Danger Close complications occur. At the end of the session the team will retreat from the dungeon to camp, and the dealer will make note of the current number of chips on each stack. When the next session begins, the dealer will return these stacks into play in the same state they were at the start.
If the team does clear a particular stack, they are entitled to a character upgrade. This grants each player on the team a single point of experience per dealer stack they clear.
To take downtime, the team must either retreat from the dungeon or make part of it safe enough for them to let their guard down. When they do, the dungeon may change before they return. As the team performs their activities, keep track of how many successful and failed actions are played out (the Rest downtime does not cause an action to be performed and is not considered as a success or failure). If the number of successes is greater than the number of failures, remove one chip from one of the dealer's stacks to represent the team's preparations making their way forward easier. If the number of failures is greater than the number of successes, add one chip to one of the dealer's stacks to represent failed preparations consuming their resources and making the way forward harder. If the successes and failures are equal, do not change the stack.
If you add a chip to a stack at the end of downtime, the dealer may select one room which has already been explored by the players and restore its threat in some way. The ancient mechanisms of a trap could reactivate themselves, a wandering monster could have taken up residence in the now-empty chamber, vermin may now swarm the bodies of the monsters slain by the team, and so forth. As the team re-enters the dungeon, present this reawakened room as a surprise to the team.
When the team discovers the lair of a great beast or a trapped chamber they may not have time to gather information in character. Each new scene still allows each player to ask at least one question, and the answers to these questions can be more elaborate thanks to the larger world present in multi-session play. The players may have received warning from an NPC questgiver, divined information with their magical abilities, or have in-world information thanks to their character's place in society. Thus the prt of a scene representing information gathering may ony really represent a few seconds in the narrative as the characters remember things or quickly put together information they already had.
If you are playing a multi-session character you may spend your experience as soon as you receive it. Each point of experience may be traded in for one of the following benefits:
- Increase an action rating by one rank.
- Acquire a gambit you do not already have.
- Acquire a discipline you do not already have.
- Permanently add a piece of equipment to your playbook.
Campaign characters gain more experience by achieving experience triggers from their playbook, and must pay increasing amounts of experience for each upgrade. These costs are detailed in the experience and advancement section of the campaign rules.
The dungeons explored by your team exist in a world of some kind. Before the first session the dealer should decide what kind of society the team exists within, approximate its level of technology, and decide if nonhumans will be available for the team to play. This wil help guide the team as they characterize their character and select their abilities and items. Campaign play can expand upon these details as the characters influence the world around them. Creating a world for your games is further described in the campaign rules.
The standard setting of multi-session Jackrealms games is a feudal society with late medieval techology (crucible steel, water mills, gothic architechture) where magic users are common (1 in 50, varying by region) and there is a broad enough array of humanoids that the players may flexibly play as a preferred fantasical lineage. This realm is usually referred to as The Realm.