Discussion - LEW 4th Edition

Wik said:

I really, really, REALLY think that L4W should have a gazeteer-type Player's guide, available as a free download, that outlines the basic geography and the general rules of playing in an open PbP.

Creamsteak: I like the idea of players being the movers and shakers of the world; I just haven't seen it happen. Until we can set up a system where experienced PCs can send inexperienced PCs on quests, where the PCs can have a role in deciding whether or not a nation should go to war, and everything else, PCs won't be movers and shakers.

Which gives me an idea, which I will post in a minute.

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You don't have to be a quest patron for other PCs to be a mover and shaker--not at all. For the other part, you will probably like the latter half of the Mega Adventure, then

How to make PCs "Movers and SHakers"

So, I was thinking.

If we make our main setting a city-state, and have a small realm that is connected to that city-state, we could have the basis for a dynamic setting.

This city-state would be largely democratic, with a political senate of sorts. And anyone can BUY a seat on this senate. Including PCs.

Each month, a question is raised, and PCs can vote for how they think laws should be enacted (if a PC is currently on adventure, one of his aides or something can vote, so that players can still use thies right even when they're busy whacking orcs or something).

These questions can be very simple ideas on laws, such as:

1. Should there be a tax on the sale of magical items? (Profits from the sale will go towards public works).

2. Should we go to war with the nation of X?

3. How much should the annual tax be?

And so on, and so forth. Each question would have an in-game reasoning, and a meta effects (ie, "If we go to war with nation X, there will be war adventures that will open up, because two GMs want to run war adventures. Also, while the war rages, magical weapons and armour will raise by 10% to reflect scarcity." or something like that).

I could see there being political parties, FORMED AND MAINTAINED BY PLAYER CHARACTERS. Which would be neat.

Now, for this to work, I think the judges would have to play a part not only in maintaining the mechanics of the world, as they already do, but to have a role in maintaining the world's dynamic nature.

If we want L4W to be truly dynamic, we need to reduce the scope of the world (something we've already mentioned as a possibility), so that PC adventures will actually have a result on the land that is noticeable in future adventures. While this does happen in LEW, I'd personally like to see it reflected in L4W more often.

I would also like to see some method where PCs can engage in other PCs outside of adventures or sales. It would be really neat if, as an example, a senatorial PC sent a low-level group of PCs on an "information gathering" quest, or something like that. Or, if the Senatorial PCs passed a war vote, there was an adventure made where people were protesting the new law. \

Rystil Arden said:

You don't have to be a quest patron for other PCs to be a mover and shaker--not at all. For the other part, you will probably like the latter half of the Mega Adventure, then

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Yeah, I kind of regreat how I didn't get in on that.

I like LEW, but I think it misses some of it's potential outside of the adventures. I'd like to see a system in place that would let PCs have a role in influencing the world beyond simply killing the lich king.

Personally, I think game judges should be able to shape how the world is changing, and update it in such a way that it becomes dynamic (and this would be much easier if the world was smaller in scope, focused around only a few "points of light").

Wik said:

Yeah, I kind of regreat how I didn't get in on that.

I like LEW, but I think it misses some of it's potential outside of the adventures. I'd like to see a system in place that would let PCs have a role in influencing the world beyond simply killing the lich king.

Personally, I think game judges should be able to shape how the world is changing, and update it in such a way that it becomes dynamic (and this would be much easier if the world was smaller in scope, focused around only a few "points of light").

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I dunno, we had a PC Mayor of Orussus for a little while.

I didn't know that. But did he really *do* anything? And if he did do anything, there was no "GM" running the adventure, so any changes he made had to be accepted solely by the playing community.

If we had rules judges, outside of adventures, these sort of things could happen much more consistently.

Wik said:

I didn't know that. But did he really *do* anything? And if he did do anything, there was no "GM" running the adventure, so any changes he made had to be accepted solely by the playing community.

If we had rules judges, outside of adventures, these sort of things could happen much more consistently.

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He did lots of things--in the future

Ah. See, that doesn't help anyone.

No, I think I like my "Senators" idea, and I think the idea of "world judges" could use a bit of discussion.

I mean, how cool would it be to have a character earn the title of "senator", and then try to form an active coalition of other players to exert political power over the main city? There's got to be a hundred adventure ideas, right there.

Wik said:

Ah. See, that doesn't help anyone.

No, I think I like my "Senators" idea, and I think the idea of "world judges" could use a bit of discussion.

I mean, how cool would it be to have a character earn the title of "senator", and then try to form an active coalition of other players to exert political power over the main city? There's got to be a hundred adventure ideas, right there.

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I'm serious though--the adventure went into the future.

What might be even better (to borrow off the Greek idea with our city-states and all), is to use a government structure similar to those of somewhere like Athens, where you already have councils of the masses and the opportunity for persuasive demagogues and tyrants to seize the reins of power. Since technically, there actually does already exist a framework for entering Orussian politics in LEW, people just have never done it--and that can be the worry for the Senator thing too. With the Greek style, there's not a barrier of entry, so that means that right away, upstanding PCs can have a voice.

Bront said:

Pantheon has a HUGE impact on the setting, and given we have a few people interested in the setting that have done a lot of work fleshing out the Pantheon intellegently in LEW, I don't think the Pantheon will be an issue. It wasn't a huge issue in LEW when I joined up other than being a mish mash of minor gods and missing most of the truely important gods (Fertility, love, death)

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I'm of the opposite opinion regarding the success of the LEW pantheon. I think there are far too many deities and nobody seems to know anything about what's going on there. It's actually one of the entry-problems for new players in that respect. At the beginning it was more about creating a specific diety for each character, and I think that this ended up with a large bloat.

I suggest that using the core pantheon as a stepping stone doesn't restrict deities in the general sense. To use 3e as an example, the assumption would be that everyone around (insert dmg 4e town) knows about that collection of deities. New characters can come in with their own beliefs, and Dms are of course free to introduce whatever concepts they want to the game. None of these structures are limited because they are not mechanic oriented.

What IS mechanic oriented and related to deities is domains in 3E. However, even without looking at systems it's fairly easy to call a diety one of fire, water, war, and evil.

Almost anything that we can design beforehand without it being effected by the rules that are released is non-mechanical. I don't see how proposing a limitation on mechanical proposals would interfere with world building in general. The only two short cuts I've detailed that introduce conceptual things that limit world building are 1) availability of the core pantheon (whatever that is) and 2) introduction of the city detailed in the DMG as a starting point.

I really should have taken the time to explain everything thoroughly before I wrote up the post above. That wasn't drafted at all first, so I guess I missed many talking points.

I agree that pantheon bloat could be a problem, and IS a problem (I still don't know all the LEW deities... or Eberron deities, for that matter).

I really think a list of seven to nine deities, AND NO MORE, would be great. We can add minor angels, saints, and demon gods later on, that are mechanically similar to deities. But keeping the initial god list low is an excellent idea.

However, connecting that to the PHB might be a poor idea. I really don't want to see followers of Pelor, Kord, and Bahamaut in L4W, for the simple reason that those gods are D&D expectations, and not OGL expectations. D&D is a seperate beast than a pure SRD game, which is something I think a lot of people notice after they've played their first PbP.

I think we should try to seperate ourselves, if not mechanically than stylistically, from the core books. Adopt a greek feel and model (something I'd totally be for). No Mind Flayers? No Problem. And all that.

While learning the pantheon could be tricky for new players, I think most people get the hang of it really quickly. Though, a lot could be said for simply adopting the Greek or Roman pantheon, names and all, and running with that.