Discussion - LEW 4th Edition

I think a 1 character appiece for the start would be good, and once several people get to 2nd, we can allow for expansion.

If you allow a flood of characters too early, it can clog up the recruitment place, and that can be intimidating for new players.

Also, it depends on the potential influx of players and GMs. My guess is we'll have trouble getting GMs initialy as people look to gain comfort with the system as a player before stepping to try to GM.

I agree with the one character a piece sentiments at least until we all start getting a real feel for the rules and its intricacies.

Something else we may haveto deal with is what to do with the additional PHBs. As of right now we have only one set of core rulebooks. According to wizards, they are talking about one set of core rulebooks per year. That's a lot of rules and considering Wizards recent track record, it is likely that it will not all be balanced.

Also, what about gnomes. They will apparently be in the MM and are a long time favorite of many, do we allow them. And for continuity purposes when they release "new" races with additional PHBs I can just feel continuity getting completely messed up.

Wik, the carribean idea is nice but I kind of feel like a Greece or a Serbia, A place near a sea where there may or may not be islands, but there is also forests, and(if we do a past ages things,which I really do like) presumably ruins of some sort within the area nearby. I like the mountains serving as a natural barrier and the city and its environs sort of being contained by them.

My idea is that during the age before this one there was lots of magic and many magical wars and empires. It was the height of Human existence and then through magic wars the empire split apart and feel into disuse. People became less concerned with wealth and more concerned with feeding themselves. Due to latent memories of this, magic is viewed upon with some disdain,except the healing magic of holy men, who wield considerable power. Just now, through time and innovation people are becoming more bold and curious and getting ready to explore(and conquer).

The city that it is based around(city X for now) is a hub of trading and such for all of the small towns and cities existing on this side of the mountains. Maybe it is even the capital of a nation that these little cities and towns have decided to have exist for their protection from the unknown, as every now and then goblins and orcs come from the mountains to give them trouble and the seas sometimes bring worse threats. Or maybe city X is a city-state, the most affluent one on this side of the mountains.

Just some ideas. Basically trying to mix the fall of rome with the dark ages with the founding of the Greek city-states.

While it is pretty early to worry about the Core Rule II+ books, my suggestion is to apply a similar ruling as we recently passed for LEW/LEB - Only the original SRD (which is supposed to be released pretty close to launch) content, namely PHB I, DMG I, and MM I, are available by default. SRD content from books thereafter (which seems likely given the quotes on Psionics being in a PHB and Psionics entering the SRD) needs to be approved separately (hopefully the SRD content won't be intermeshed to be inseperable). I would go a step further and recommend that races playable out of the MM need to be approved separately. While gnomes will presumably be playable out of the MM, there may also be others, such as warforged.
The Core Rule II+ books are also part of why I think that an exploration aspect is so important. Even if not all new stuff gets approved, some will, and it helps if we have undeveloped areas where we can say, "Yes, psionics is pretty strong there", for example.

Bookkeeping:
We are pretty certain that the 4E class list at launch is : Fighter, Paladin (Defender), Cleric, Warlord (Leader), Wizard, Warlock (Controller), Rogue, and Ranger (Striker). We know there are eight classes, and only the paladin and warlord aren't exactly confirmed yet.
We are pretty certain that the 4E race list at launch is: Dwarf, Eladrin, Elf, Halfling, Half-Elf, Half-Orc, Human, Tiefling. There may be more races, and one or two others might not make cut. There are more playable races in the MM.
We know the broad strokes of the default cosmology, but we don't know yet how much of it will end up SRD content.
Tieflings and warlocks work together to paint a less-than-bright image of the 4E world, but we don't know yet what form alignment takes (if any).

My thoughts exactly.

Yeah, I like a Greek model - we have islands, but we have a mainland, too.

I think there should be an empire that is decaying, so we can throw in some "evil empire" meta-plots. The main city should be part of a loose confederacy of city-states (as in Ancient Greece, really) that are allied together to defend against foreign attack, but politik against one another.

We need an expanse of orc/goblin/demon inhabited wastes that was once a great empire - so we can throw in some dungeon adventures. And a lot of wilderness areas that swallowed up other ancient ruins, so we can have wilderness adventures.

***

As for deities, I like the idea of there being definately less than ten, and maybe only ONE is evil. Fewer deities means it's easier to remember them all, and I think it works better in a campaign overall. We can always add angel- and demon- based cults later on.

Wik said:

Yeah, I like a Greek model - we have islands, but we have a mainland, too.

Click to expand...

How does that differ from the Caribbean basin?

Slightly, with the Carribean basin its more island than mainland for one and for two there are no natural barriers separating say florida from the rest of the continent. With the greek model the mountains provide a barrier, a reason that most do not really know what is beyond the mountain. Perhaps this evil decaying empire, which has coincidentally caused a mistrust of magic has a base on a large island(roughly equivalent to Crete using the Greek Analogy) where they launch periodic attacks, but otherwise yeah.

Perhaps after a larger great magical society fell apart, this new empire sort of rose from the ashes,more twisted and more creepy, but not as powerful.

So, if the books are being released in, what, June? When does work on forming the basis of the world start? I'm thinking late January, maybe? And we figure out who is "world-building" in early January.

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dudc/20071019&authentic=true

Room to Adventure

Imagine a world shrouded in darkness -- vast stretches of wilderness untouched by the civilizing hands of humans and dwarves, dotted with crumbling ruins left by the ancient empire of the tieflings or the last great elf kingdom.

Scattered far and wide amid that darkness, like faint stars in the night sky, are the enclaves of civilization; here and there one finds a great city-state or strong barony, but mostly you encounter frontier towns or close-knit villages of farmers and artisans who cling close together for protection against the dark.

Your players' characters will start in one of those points of light.

Click to expand...

y'know, a Barony *COULD* be an excellent place to centre a campaign! instead of a city, we have a small city as the centre, based in a barony surrounded by wilderness, that connects to the sea. And put an island-based big city nearby.

Kind of a return to classic D&D, really.