Discussion - LEW 4th Edition

Judges should not be getting extra awards. As much as they do provide a service, it gives the appearance of Judge Favoritism, which has been an issue expressed by some current and former LEW participants.

Other than that, I think most of your proposals are a little too crunch oriented. (Crafting, Affiliations, magic items) And we can't regulate things so strictly that the paperwork becomes a major hassle, it wil drive people away.

Record keeping in general and a basic structure are all that we need to deal with for now. Once the PHB comes out, more specific things, like chracter creation rules can be worked out. DMG should help with dealing with GM rewards, XP, and crafting, and the finishing touches worked out with the MM.

I think the bazaar rules would be fairly rules-light to run. I just think I may have over-explained things.

As for "crunch" stuff, I'm really just writing in provisos ahead of time. We know there's going to be a craft skill in 4e (how could there not be?) - I just want to think ahead. As for affiliations - yeah, I probably am getting ahead of myself, but I'm really thinking it'd be cool to include them, even if there are no real benefits (I really think L4W could benefit having some player character organizations involved).

And I guess you're right about the judges thing.

I don't want to make affiliations with crunch rewards in them until later, certainly not at the onset when crunch is harder to balance. Ironically, there are actually good rules for affiliations in 3.5. The place that should pick up affiliations first is actually LEB--they're technically a totally valid option there if someone proposes them.

Rystil Arden said:

I don't want to make affiliations with crunch rewards in them until later, certainly not at the onset when crunch is harder to balance. Ironically, there are actually good rules for affiliations in 3.5. The place that should pick up affiliations first is actually LEB--they're technically a totally valid option there if someone proposes them.

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I agree about the crunch part. I just have a tendency to think about it, when making proposals.

I like the idea of affiliations in Eberron, and it might be neat to start two or three up. I don't think we should add only one, since the whole point is for PCs to figure out which one interests them the most, at the cost of another affiliation.

I think that now is the time to start talking about how to deal with 4E. LEW will have to switch over I think. Otherwise it it will just die a slow death. How many 3E games do you see running on the ENWorld forums these days?

My suggestion would be to to start over. Conversion would be messy. I haven't read all of the thread yet, so much of this may have already been suggested.

Start with a map, outlining the basic geography of the world or setting. Geography shouldn't be too affected by any rules changes. Along with the map there should be something like a wiki, ensuring that established or canon material is easy to find and incorporate for DM's. In my experience as a LEW DM, trying to ensure continuity was a huge obstacle to entry. The organic approach of LEW3.5 worked, but it wasn't the easiest to manage.

Instead of one main city, I would have a number of main cities - perhaps one in each of the key regions. Link each city by teleportation gates, allowing easy transition from city to city, adventure to adventure. The cities themselves could be relatively small, but combined offer the opportunities of huge metropolises like Sharn. The descriptions of these can be kept very general in the first instance, with specifics added as the rules become available, or as DM's decide to use them. The immediate surrounds of the cities could also be outlined, giving people something to start with. Meanwhile, the areas in between can be left undescribed - blank slates for people to build upon. Of course, there are many other cities, meaning travelling by more conventional means would still be required.

The RDI (or its equivilent) could be located in a unique location, connected to each of the cities by its own gates.

Once 4E comes out, set up LEW4 to run alongside LEW3.5. Gradually, I suspect, LEW3.5 will fade away, as players chose to start new characters in LEW4. Players with established LEW3.5 characters should be entitled to create LEW4 characters using some version of the retirement mechanism.

doghead
aka thotd

Creamsteak said:

Do we do like LEW and have everyone start at 1st level? Or do we do like LEB and have multiple starting levels?

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Start at 1st level. It will also make planning and recruiting for adventures easier in the first few months.

Creamsteak said:

Do we want to drop the idea of a Red Dragon Inn mechanic? Change it? Keep it?

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What would be the alternatives? Recruiting threads could be used. It would mean more threads, but less chance of recruiting posts getting lost in the clutter.

Creamsteak said:

How do we want to treat people that propose running a published module? This has a lot of sub questions. I expect the first published module to be something everyone wants to "Try out."

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Let them. Both of my games were based on published models, modified to fit the setting. The approval process should be enough to deal with problems such as several people trying to run the same module. Change the location, change the NPC's names, change key monster types. So long as different characters (not in the same group) don't come back with exactly the same tale, would it matter?

Creamsteak said:

Do we need to look into how we deal with proposals? I certainly think restricting "crunch" proposals at first would help, since we won't really intimately "know" the mechanics until we've played them fairly well.

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A six month moratorium on crunch proposals has been suggested, and sounds like a good idea.

Creamsteak said:

Do we want to make a stronger mechanic for grounding DM concepts to the game world? I know that the Interface and Tracking thread was originally intended to be the place to reference for "Oh, so there's a city over there, and a swamp over there" from a previous adventures.

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I think there needs to be something like a wiki. Information should be sorted geographically - so when I know where I want to place the adventure, it is easy to find all the relevant information on that area. Hunting through pages of posts to find anything relevant to an area (and then trying to meld conflicting information into a coherent whole) is just too hard.

Keeping the map up to date would also really help. If its on the map, its canon. Anything on the map will have a corresponding information entry. Judges could do the updating, based on information provided by DM's. Ideally, it should be just a cut and paste job for the judge. Or perhaps DM's could be granted editing rights.

Creamsteak said:

Are there any changes to the character records and methods we use? I'm fairly satisfied with this, but we might be able to make some improvements or tweaks to how we list/update characters. One idea I have is to add a Sub-forum to the L4W, and record each character in a thread rather than a post. Then one sticky thread that acts as the "list of characters" with links. Then have the DMs of games post to the characters threads with their recieved rewards. Thus keeping all updates visible to everyone. This has advantages and disadvantages obviously. I'm not sure which is best.

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A thread per character would be nice. Previous versions of the character could be kept there, along with information about adventures participated in etc. But it would mean a lot of threads. A thread per player would reduce the number, but then you could have information relating to several characters all mixed up in one thread. Can we have sub-forums of sub-forums?

I wouldn't require DM's to post rewards to the character threads. DM's have enough work as it it. Keeping a record in the first post of the adventure should be enough. Players should be responsible for updating their own character threads.

doghead
aka thotd

LEW will remain 3.5, and it will probably keep going for a while. I know when 3.0 came out, we finished our 2nd ed campaigns first.

The 4E LEW will likely be an entirely new world built from the ground up by it's judges and players.

Sometimes, players are intimidated by an established world, particularly with LEW which has characters ranging from 1st to 9th. A fresh start never hurts every once and a while.

LEW 3.5 may slowly fade away, but I'd be suprised if it didn't stick around for at least another 2 years, if not longer.

doghead said:

I think there needs to be something like a wiki. Information should be sorted geographically - so when I know where I want to place the adventure, it is easy to find all the relevant information on that area. Hunting through pages of posts to find anything relevant to an area (and then trying to meld conflicting information into a coherent whole) is just too hard.

Keeping the map up to date would also really help. If its on the map, its canon. Anything on the map will have a corresponding information entry. Judges could do the updating, based on information provided by DM's. Ideally, it should be just a cut and paste job for the judge. Or perhaps DM's could be granted editing rights.

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I personally like the idea of a PDF, simply because it's something that players can more easily print out and use. It also seems perhaps a bit more "real". And I've always found PDFs to be much more accessible.

If we updated the PDF every year or so, it would be fairly useful, methinks.

Wik said:

I personally like the idea of a PDF, simply because it's something that players can more easily print out and use. It also seems perhaps a bit more "real". And I've always found PDFs to be much more accessible.

If we updated the PDF every year or so, it would be fairly useful, methinks.

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Information changes very regularly. A Wiki allows multiple people to edit it and keep it up, and is easier to keep more up to date.

LEW does have a wiki btw.

Bront said:

Information changes very regularly. A Wiki allows multiple people to edit it and keep it up, and is easier to keep more up to date.

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Exactly.

Bront said:

LEW does have a wiki btw.

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I know. But the last time I looked at it, it was fairly sparse. It really seemed like an under utilised resource.

doghead
aka thotd