Discussion - LEW 4th Edition

I've lurked this thread since its genesis, but the rampant speculation on 4e was too much for me. Now that I have copies of the 4e Core books, I feel like I can start to look more closely at L4W.

I think the first step to making this a reality is to get a feel for what existing Living players want. That means highly visible polls! So let's draft some polls and put them up for the players to vote on, since ultimately, the players will be the ones who... well, play.

I'll expand upon Phoenix's previous post by listing some polls. These are highly volatile, intended mostly as a template/summary of the ideas presented so far. Please quote this post and add/remove polls/options as you think appropriate.

World Building:

• Bottom up
• Top down
• Bottom up with a map (a very simple, conservative map, depicting only a basic landmass with outlines of the coast)

Will L4W begin as a single starting city, with very vague surroundings, and the world will be developed as games are played, much like LEW was? Or will some elected World Judges design a flexible framework for the world?

Much of the following polls depend heavily on the outcome of this first poll.

Religion

• Many, many deities, several pantheons (ala Forgotten Realms pantheon)
• A few custom deities, with room for more (ala LEW)
• Core deities (with custom names, to avoid legal troubles)
• A few custom deities, with no room for more deities but plenty of room for cults, powerful beings, etc.
• One god
• Greek pantheon (real world)
• Greek pantheon (modified)
• Another real world pantheon
• Several real world pantheons

Local Geography

• Continental inland
• Continental coast
• Archipelago
• Peninsula
• Aegaen (a slightly modified, real world map)
• Carribean (a slightly modified, real world map)
• A combination of the above (Somewhat like the Aegaen, a peninsula jutting into a large body of water with some nearby continental wilderness and islands)

Though shot down by the "earlybirds", a continental inland with large lakes/seas could be equally as free, and should be available as an option for voters.

Starting City

• The small town of Fallcrest in the frontier land of Nentir Valley (from the 4e DMG)
• A small frontier town, with several local adventuring sites. (ala Fallcrest, but Homebrew)
• A barony, surrounded locally by protected lands, but with dangerous wilderness beyond.
• A medium/large sized city, isolated due to geography
• A small independent trade city, centrally located (ala Orussus)
• A medium/large sized city, centrally located and well connected
• A medium/large sized city, on the fringes of the civilized world
• A vast metropolis

Nations

• One large empire
• Many large empires
• Many kingdoms of varying size
• "Points of Light" (ie. Walled city states)
• Greek City States
• Various real world cultures contained in City States
• Fantasy City States with healthy trade (not "Points of Light")
• Kingdoms and City States set amidst the remnants of an ancient empire from the previous age.

The details of exactly what custom deities there would be, and how they would be created, could be worked out later or submitted as part of the poll. For example, World Judges create the custom pantheon, or the pantheon is an amalgam of custom deities submitted by players.

Name

• L4W
• The Fourth Age
• The Age of Heroes
• Living Quadralia
• Stephen Colbert Land
• Tack "Living ENWorld: " as a prefix to one of the above options

Sea/Wilderness as a transitive plane

• Yes
• No

Will the seas and/or the wilderness be a transitive plane, where "navigation is more of an art than a science", and travel times are uncertain at best? If yes, will there be "established routes" where travel times are more of a certainty, or will sailing into "The Mists" always be a game of chance?

Portals in the home city

• Yes
• No

Will the home city have portals to other parts of the world? If yes, will there be many portals, or just a few? Will they link local places, or very distant, exotic locales?

It's somewhat difficult to split up the ideas into polls, as they're very interrelated. I tried to keep the polls unbiased and all inclusive, so now I'll voice some opinions.

Regarding world building, it should be up to the community. We've got some great thinkers, and some neat ideas, and I do have opinions. But ultimately I think the community should choose.

Regarding meta rules, I think taking some load off of the judges is important.

Judge rewarding isn't conducive to happy players, I don't think, so that's not really a valid option.

Somebody mentioned having "Scribes" earlier. They would log an adventure in real-time, recording world information, in return for "Tokens". This could potentially be the DM, or it could be somebody else.

I'm wondering if Adventure Judges are even necessary at all. I suppose they're good to have if a DM disappears, but have we ever had a case of an Adventure Judge doing anything besides rules advice and stepping in for an absent DM? XP approval is arguably an important Judge function. Since we're starting a new world, from the ground up (all talk of conversion has been left in the dust), we might as well reconsider the fundamental meta rules of LEW.

As a Character Judge, I can tell you that even when we only have a few characters, it's still a lot of work (especially high level characters), and when an adventure finishes and everybody levels, it's... well, frankly it's a pain in the neck. I don't know if there's a better way to approve characters, because I think it's a necessary thing, but the current system, while effective, is rather slow and takes some very dedicated individuals. (My sincerest thanks goes out to Orsal, senior Character Judge and, to my knowledge, longest standing Character Judge. Without you, LEW would cease to function.)

One thing I am certain of: Wiki's are awesome. And now that we have an ENW2 wiki, we should definitely make use of it. It could be used for many things, not just as an Atlas.

The Bazaar that Wik mentioned could be located there. No need for a judge/mod to take down old things, let the community handle it.

The Library that someone (Wik?) mentioned, the catalog of character thoughts/adventure summaries/whatnot could be located there.

I'm not so certain about this, but maybe even characters could be kept there. Since the wiki can be edited by everybody, it poses a slight security risk, but really, a forum is not the best place for a catalog of characters either.

Wiki's have infinite memories (that is, all past versions of a page are saved in the history forever), so all changes to a character are automatically logged. This means that they are verifiable and reversible. I can maybe see a DM adding XP to each of his players Character Wiki Pages, and the Character Judges just check that the XP section has only been touched by DMs.

Anyway, I'd just like to see the community do more and the judges do less. Not just from an administrative perspective, but also from a "building a functioning world together" perspective.

From my LEB experience, character judging is either boring (when nothing is happening) or PITA (whenever everyone levels... it almost never happens singly). 4E *might* make this simpler currently with its fewer decision points at higher level, but there is still a lot of math to check. Maybe a PC->DM->Character Judge approval process (PC creates it, current DM vets it, glance by CJ for final approval).

Having a designated person for taking over an adventure is, I think, one of the fundamental reasons the Living Worlds work. Otherwise, we'd just have the normal PbP boards, where the majority of games die when a DM disappears. That, I think, cannot be changed. Even though it isn't a lot of work most of the time, having someone eyeball the thread every once in a while is useful for keeping things moving.

Rules adjudication could just be sent to a specific thread instead of the game's IC thread. The judge system also works well for proposals.

Expanding on the Wiki character idea:

Each character has a page in the wiki. Each character also has an XP page, created by a Judge when the character is approved. This page is not to be edited by the character's player, only by Judges. At the end of an adventure, a Judge goes onto each character's page and updates the character's XP.

This way, the history of the XP page contains only Judge edits. If a page is accidentally edited/vandalized, the character can report it and a Judge will revert the page to the last legitimate version.

While this adds to Judge responsibilities (uh... oops) it makes for a more easily verified XP log for characters. And if we remove the Judge responsibility of rules questions (by redirecting them to the general discussion thread, for example), their work load remains approximately the same.

... This is still just a brainstorm, and maybe Judges would rather have fun tasks like rules lawyering than boring administrative tasks like XP awarding.

stonegod said:

Having a designated person for taking over an adventure is, I think, one of the fundamental reasons the Living Worlds work. Otherwise, we'd just have the normal PbP boards, where the majority of games die when a DM disappears. That, I think, cannot be changed. Even though it isn't a lot of work most of the time, having someone eyeball the thread every once in a while is useful for keeping things moving.

Click to expand...

Very true, and I agree 100%. Thanks for raising that point.

Rae ArdGaoth said:

World Building:

• Bottom up
• Top down

Will L4W begin as a single starting city, with very vague surroundings, and the world will be developed as games are played, much like LEW was? Or will some elected World Judges design a flexible framework for the world?

Click to expand...

Another option is Bottom Up but with a blank map. Not sure what to call it. Just the outlines of the coasts to show where the sea is.

Where would be the best place to post said poll? LEW forum? Or Talking the Talk?

The Goblin King said:

Another option is Bottom Up but with a blank map. Not sure what to call it. Just the outlines of the coasts to show where the sea is.

Where would be the best place to post said poll? LEW forum? Or Talking the Talk?

Click to expand...

I think it would get more exposure in the LEW forum, but they put this thread here for a reason I'm guessing. Maybe post the poll here in 'Talking the Talk', but put a link to it in the General Discussion thread in the LEW forum? That should draw over anyone from there that's paying attention and interested in helping?

I'm wondering if the most pertinent question is whether or not to use the assumed setting. It would answer the questions of bottom up, gods, and starting town. Would you agree?

The Goblin King said:

I'm wondering if the most pertinent question is whether or not to use the assumed setting. It would answer the questions of bottom up, gods, and starting town. Would you agree?

Click to expand...

As a separate poll or as a fourth option to the first poll? Either way is fine, but I think it might be prudent not to overload people with too many polls. Those mildly interested can vote in the first one (or first two), those really interested can vote in all the following ones.

Also, I've been reading the new 4e SRD, and related GSL news. It's, uh... not like 3.5e. (Some people have already said this, but it bears repeating.) If we do use Fallcrest, everybody will have to have their own book (or somehow their own reference). We will be able to list deities, we won't be able to reproduce their descriptions/rules. A wiki of the Living world might be possible, but an Atlas containing detailed information on Fallcrest won't fly, I'm pretty sure.

The 4e SRD is quite literally a "reference" to the PHB. It's more like an index than anything, that says "You can use the rules on dragonborn breath in your third party product." I don't think an online third-party catalog of the rules, like d20srd.org, will be legal or tolerated. link (A terrible day for me, since I use that site more than often than the two copies of 3.5 core books that I own.)

It kind of raises PbP questions for me. PC: "I want to go to the tavern in Fallcrest. Where can I go?" DM:"There's the Blue Moon Alehouse, the Lucky Gnome Taphouse, and the Nentir Inn taproom." PC: "What are those taverns like?" DM: "Please refer to your PHB, as the GSL prohibits me from publishing that information publicly."

People have probably already been talking about this for months, but I'm just now getting the news.

I'm sure people will be happy to share little pieces of their homebrewed worlds...