Discussion - LEW 4th Edition

Rystil Arden · Sep 10, 2007

The Goblin King said:
So, is L4W going to feature the 'points of light' paradigm? I would like to see that.

Meh, much like most of the 4e fluff changes, I don't care for 'points of light'. It's okay for just a home game adventure or campaign, but it is absolutely atrocious for a living shared world, in my opinion.

Then again, in some ways 'points of light' is just a buzzword. I don't think anyone disagrees that there should be cool wild-type areas with lots of adventure in them. It's just the rather silly way they push it as 'these few cities are okay but everything is overrun by evil'. Cities don't survive randomly if they don't have an infrastructure.

Bront · Sep 10, 2007

Wik said:
Just the lands of fire, earth, and all that jazz. And it seems pretty bizarre, overall.

Truth be told, I don't really like idea of planes in PbP anyways.

The towers have nothing to do with the planes other than possibly being gateways to them, it's just where each element is strongest. one of the creation myths simply has the towers being used to anchor the remaining land to the enworldphant.

Bront · Sep 10, 2007

Not familiar with what "points of light" means, as I haven't been paying attention, RA is correct that you need more than a few good cities amis a mass of evil.

Bandits and raiders along roads? That's fairly standard without the wild being "overrun bu evil". Entirely evil cities? Great! A country overrun? Fantastic. Everywhere? No.

I've never been a huge fan of planar travel, though Planescape always intrigued me. I do suggest we keep things simple and use whatever plainer cosmology is presented in 4E, with as few tweeks as possable.

As for an actual map, I'm all for one, but that requires someone to create and maintain it, preferably more than one person, and to do it in such a way that it can be replicated. LEW has 2 nice maps, and then the person who did them disapeared, and no one's been able to replicate them.

Also, not every place deserves to be on the map. In LEW, Covington has seen 2 adventures that I'm aware of. It deserves to have a writeup (which I am working on, there's sort of one), but it's small, and would not likely be on a map. If we stick every little town on a map, it begins to clutter the map and stifle creativity to a point. (Dang it! There's a city there already, and it's an all dwarf city, that won't do).

LogicsFate · Sep 10, 2007

Bront said:
The towers have nothing to do with the planes other than possibly being gateways to them, it's just where each element is strongest. one of the creation myths simply has the towers being used to anchor the remaining land to the enworldphant.

Yup, nor are the lands of fire actually on fire. They just have much of the world's deserts. Water tower is surrounds by the main Ocean, Earth by the Biggest mountainy area, air by the uhh, airiest area. Positive and neutral? I have no idea.

As for points of light... I like the idea, but for LEW? meh

doghead · Sep 10, 2007

Bront said:
Not familiar with what "points of light" means, as I haven't been paying attention, RA is correct that you need more than a few good cities amis a mass of evil.

'points of light' is part of the design philsophy behind 4E - the characters are 'points of light' in the darkness. Not sure how evil characters, or even just self serving ones fit into that.

Bront said:
As for an actual map, I'm all for one, but that requires someone to create and maintain it, preferably more than one person, and to do it in such a way that it can be replicated.

Agreed. The map will take some work, but it is the simplest way to ensure continuity between adventures, as well as the best medium for information exchange between participants.

Bront said:
Also, not every place deserves to be on the map. In LEW, Covington has seen 2 adventures that I'm aware of. It deserves to have a writeup (which I am working on, there's sort of one), but it's small, and would not likely be on a map. If we stick every little town on a map, it begins to clutter the map and stifle creativity to a point. (Dang it! There's a city there already, and it's an all dwarf city, that won't do).

This is true for all information recorded and stored. I suppose the question is, what sort of level of continuity is desired? Does it matter if an adventurer travels the same road twice - the first time there are villages and traveller's inns every dozen miles or so, and the next time it is unrelieved wilderness the whole way?

doghead
aka thotd

The Goblin King · Sep 11, 2007

Bront said:
As for an actual map, I'm all for one, but that requires someone to create and maintain it, preferably more than one person, and to do it in such a way that it can be replicated. LEW has 2 nice maps, and then the person who did them disapeared, and no one's been able to replicate them.

I am really sorry about that. I got busy IRL and drifted away from RPGs in general. In my opinion a terrain map should come first before people start making towns and stuff. Let me tell you it was no fun trying to make a map from a DMs vague and sometimes contradicting descriptions. About halfway though I said 'screw it' and just started putting things where I thought they should go artistically. BUT, I have been thinking about maps quite a lot lately. I see two ways to go about this:

1) something like Inkscape which is a free open source vector based graphics editor. It does some of the things CorelDraw does. I've been playing around with it and its pretty cool. The SVG files will display right in your firefox browser so if I put them on the Wiki then anyone could look at them, edit it in Inkscape, then reupload it. You can see an example of this in the Tempest setting. The downside is of course the Inkscape learning curve.

2) something like AK Hexmapper which is also freeware. It outputs bitmaps and is simple enough anyone could use it. The downside is that its limited in what it can do and the maps have a serious retro feel.

The Goblin King · Sep 11, 2007

while trying to get to sleep I had another idea. how about if the world and continental maps were done in vector based image with inkscape then each regional view was done in hexmapper ? it would be kind of like Wilderlands but we could make the hexes bigger. like 25 miles instead of 5. that would be plenty wiggle room. what about an area like the caribbean for starting area? I was thinking something like the panama canal where panama city = orussus. lots of islands ((yay pirates!)) plus jungles, mountains, deserts. everything except ice.

Creamsteak · Sep 11, 2007

I like that idea a bit TGK.

- - -

Regarding the towers, they are not planar really. My intent for them was sort of part of the setting. Deserts/volcanoes were part of the fire region, ice and water for the water region. The positive/negative energy towers were probably awkwardly named and developed. I think the better way to term them looking back now would be the tower of growth and the tower of decay. They were just "very different" regions to visit.

I kind of liked them though. And they had "some" background for high-end adventuring. I never really developed it, but I intended for them to be high level adventure sites where you could have high level monsters or such without them really being able to violate the actual world.

One idea I'd like to propose as a topic of thought is making the L4W world the original world LEW came from by some of the creation myths.

I don't know if this will be popular or not, but one of the creation myths for LEW was that the world was originally part of a normal planet. A powerful wizard or group of wizards uprooted the portion in between the six towers, and "left."

The L4W world could, pretty easily, have been originally the world LEW came from. All that this would require is that a massive crater (possibly an ocean now) was pulled out some point way way back in history.

This isn't anything incredibly complicated really. It's sort of just a way of tieing the two together without having to deal with any mechanical changes.

LogicsFate · Sep 11, 2007

An interesting idea, though we would have to make the new world huge to incorprate it.

Feels weird thinking about a fresh start... I was just getting used to the ENworphant.

Phoenix8008 · Sep 11, 2007

Neat idea CS! I would love to think that the two worlds were linked somehow. Reminds me of "The Pitt" from the old New Universe comic books by Marvel 20 years ago. Gynormous crater in the crust of the Earth where Pittsburg used to be...

And it would be easy. Either have the crater itself still there on land (an interesting adventure site!) Or just have it as an inside joke and have some ocean or sea with a perfectly round shore where the land of LEW used to be.