Discussion - LEW 4th Edition

Sounds good to me. Although, I think it might be better to round up a L4W design group (maybe six strong or so) to sketch out the basics of our world. And then have the unwashed masses (ie, our posters) fill it in with stuff they'd like to see. We write up draft #2, go over it again, and then start play.

Ideally, we should start work on the fluff fairly soon (as in a few months), and then when the game releases in may, we can start tweaking the setting to fit the rules a bit more accurately (this would roughly coincide with draft #2).

In any case, what I'd like to see in a L4W world:

1) Archipelego, with a mainlaind that's sort of like Xendrik or the Isle of Dread - a hotbed for adventure that's lined with ancient ruins. The islands of the archipelego are each independant kingdoms. We could detail the main ones, and then have numerous smaller ones that individual GMs could flesh out as they please.

2) Let the main city (the "Orussus" of the game world) be something a bit larger than Orussus. I'm thinking almost Ptolus-sized; a "hub" city that can support adventures a bit easier.

3) Keep the lower-magic feel of LEW in comparison to "Core" D&D worlds, since progression is still going to be fairly slow.

4) A "Double XP" house rule might fit, too, so that there's a higher degree of progression in our game. Or maybe a "1.5 times the XP" rule. I dunno. Just riffing, here (gaining one level per adventure I think is what we should be aiming for, since each adventure can take several months. I've been playing Galwynn for around four or five months now, and he just hit level 2. Which is cool and all, but part of the fun of D&D is levelling up, you know?)

5) I'd still say keep it core, but maybe with a vote in for special rules like we have over on the Living Eberron. Depending on how the system turns out.

Hmm, interesting thoughts--here's my take:

1) An Archipelago could work, but I'd suggest against it being too islandish purely on a "We probably won't have good ship-to-ship combat rules or other seafaring stuff in the core" basis. Something a bit more balanced between the extremes of LEW (which has almost no islands except in that one area) and that idea might work best. Look at, for instance, this map, where water and islands are more important, but not essential (yes, it's Eyros again, but I can't think of anything else that has a nice free map):

2) I actually really dislike that about LEB, personally. I enjoy all the exploration and exotic places in LEW. In LEB, every single adventure I've ever seen (though I haven't looked carefully at all of them) has stayed in Sharn except one of mine that is still geographically located in Sharn and then Mog's adventure What Happened? For me, that's actually rather boring. My Druid is certainly enthused to finally have a non-Sharn adventure. Now, we might not necessarily get that effect in L4W, but I personally find it undesirable.

3) I agree with the lower-power (not necessarily lower magic!) feel.

4) Nah. We'll see how they deal with XP in 4e anyway first. IMO, 3e actually gives out way too much XP already, it's just that PbP slows down with unresponsive players. Take a look at some of my LEW games when players are responsive to see how ridiculously fast advancement can happen

5) We also have to consider that Wizards seems to plan on releasing later PHs et al to the SRD, so we might want to make sure we don't allow all SRD unless we want sudden influxes of stuff.

Trouvere said:

For the record, let it be noted that Galwynn reached level 2 by delivering a cake, hitting the ground with his sword twice, then falling asleep in the woods.

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Lasair hit level 2 by watching and missing once with a crossbow as the level 4 Ranger killed the bandits and then going to a Festival for a while

Oh wait, she also tried to Charm a boar, but in typical Bard fashion, a Bard NPC ruined her attempt by attacking it, so it ran away injured. Actually she was already level 2 by then. Then she got level 3 from large heaps of time XP. Only level 4 was really legitimate

Rystil Arden said:

2) I actually really dislike that about LEB, personally. I enjoy all the exploration and exotic places in LEW. In LEB, every single adventure I've ever seen (though I haven't looked carefully at all of them) has stayed in Sharn except one of mine that is still geographically located in Sharn and then Mog's adventure What Happened? For me, that's actually rather boring. My Druid is certainly enthused to finally have a non-Sharn adventure. Now, we might not necessarily get that effect in L4W, but I personally find it undesirable.

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Non-Sharn Adventures
- Zombie Hunt (our third adventure)
- Heart of Artifice
- A Simple Job
- Beer Run
- What Happened?
- The Eidolon (eventually I think)
6/16 adventures.

stonegod said:

Non-Sharn Adventures
- Zombie Hunt (our third adventure)
- Heart of Artifice
- A Simple Job
- Beer Run
- What Happened?
- The Eidolon (eventually I think)
6/16 adventures.

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That's telling though, isn't it? It's nearly 2/3 of them (and for my characters personally, it was 4/5 in Sharn). And Heart of Artifice, as far as Eberron goes, is all in Sharn as well. Still, it's more than I had noticed, but I like the relative percentage of Orussus versus non Orussus adventures in LEW better, personally. What's the point of having cool and exotic lands if you just stay in the city most of the time?

stonegod said:

- The Eidolon (eventually I think)
6/16 adventures.

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How'd you guess?

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Re: The archipelego idea.

the reason I like an archipelego feel for a world is that it's perfect for a PBP, where each GM can pretty much add their own island as they see fit, without worrying too much about stepping on people's toes. As for ship-to-ship combat rules, well... I'm pretty sure that any GM that wants to include them will have their own way of running it. (For example, in my current game I'm running, I have a skyship attacking a tower - and I'm just winging it. It's not hard to do).

As for the big city idea - right now, both the adventures I've run in LEW have been urban in nature, and both times, I've got the same comment from judges - namely, "Orussus is too small for a group that size". I'm pushing boundaries with the blacklilies, and they're less than 30 strong!

Since the main city is where all adventures start, and a large number of low-level adventures will probably take place in the starting city, I think it should be a fairly large place, so that it can support all the weird things individual GMs think up. I'm not talking about it necessarily being Ptolus, or Imperial Rome (though, that would be cool!). But I do think it should be large enough that we can have sizable thieves' guilds, enough room for competing power groups (and lots of 'em!), and room for adventure.

As an idea, it could be cool to have the main city be mobile... maybe a floating island or something, or a "ship city" that floats from island to island (the benefit being that it's easy enough to say "hey, the city happens to be right next to the adventure site!"

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An alternative to the archipelego idea would be a planar game, with the main city being something like sigil. The downside to this, in my opinion, is that it's too easy to have each GM run a game in their own plane, and that pretty much destroys the whole point of a living campaign - that characters interact with their world, and build on each others' exploits.

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And Trouvere - quiet, you.

the reason I like an archipelego feel for a world is that it's perfect for a PBP, where each GM can pretty much add their own island as they see fit, without worrying too much about stepping on people's toes. As for ship-to-ship combat rules, well... I'm pretty sure that any GM that wants to include them will have their own way of running it. (For example, in my current game I'm running, I have a skyship attacking a tower - and I'm just winging it. It's not hard to do).

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Hmm, I've always felt it was easy enough to add new places to LEW if needed, without the need for such isolation, and it gives more of an interconnected feeling. But as I suggested, a mainland with a large oceanside and then little islands (like in the map in the link), might maintain the best of both worlds. The trouble with inconsistent ship-to-ship combat comes when it becomes important in multiple games, particularly across the same players (you could get something like "Dude, when we used Wik's ship-to-ship combat rules back two levels ago, everything was awesome and we defeated the ghost ship and the kraken together with just our galley. Now are you telling me that with your rules we're going to lose to a single pirate ship because your weird ramming rules give a +10 bonus if you have a steel ram?")

As for the big city idea - right now, both the adventures I've run in LEW have been urban in nature, and both times, I've got the same comment from judges - namely, "Orussus is too small for a group that size". I'm pushing boundaries with the blacklilies, and they're less than 30 strong!

Since the main city is where all adventures start, and a large number of low-level adventures will probably take place in the starting city, I think it should be a fairly large place, so that it can support all the weird things individual GMs think up. I'm not talking about it necessarily being Ptolus, or Imperial Rome (though, that would be cool!). But I do think it should be large enough that we can have sizable thieves' guilds, enough room for competing power groups (and lots of 'em!), and room for adventure.

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I agree that larger than Orussus might be good, but Sharn and Ptolus are far too large and stifle exploration, IMO, at least from anecdotal evidence in LEB. I might not have said that a year ago if I hadn't seen it in LEB. Maybe a happy medium. What is Orussus, small city? We could make it a large city instead, just not a metropolis.

Rystil Arden said:

I agree that larger than Orussus might be good, but Sharn and Ptolus are far too large and stifle exploration, IMO, at least from anecdotal evidence in LEB. I might not have said that a year ago if I hadn't seen it in LEB. Maybe a happy medium. What is Orussus, small city? We could make it a large city instead, just not a metropolis.

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I wouldn't say it stifles it so much as it makes it easier to run Urban adventures---there is a lot more opportunity then there is in a small town like Orussus. In addition, it might be a DM preference. Finally, urban adventures seem to encourage more social encounters than your typical wilderness jaunt (being in the middle of no where and all).

I'd be curious to see the actual states for urban vs. non-urban in LEW, but I'm not going to do it.

stonegod said:

I wouldn't say it stifles it so much as it makes it easier to run Urban adventures---there is a lot more opportunity then there is in a small town like Orussus. In addition, it might be a DM preference. Finally, urban adventures seem to encourage more social encounters than your typical wilderness jaunt (being in the middle of no where and all).

I'd be curious to see the actual states for urban vs. non-urban in LEW, but I'm not going to do it.

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Ah, but I find that LEW does have urban and town-based adventures, they're just spread out amongst different locations. Don't get me wrong, I love social interactions and town-based adventures, but I don't like using the same town over and over. For instance, my A Teacher for Laynie was almost entirely in Medibaria and was a social-based mystery game for most of the time. Festival of Halina was almost all in Covington and had a lot of fun roleplaying moments. Niobe's Dilemma (and also Murder is the Pits) were both in Earling. There's been enough in Orussus that I needn't name them. I might run an adventure in Fallon at some point depending on how things go in Ashin's Commission, but not yet.

Of my characters, I've seen the following--

Zaeryl:

1 town-based with slight harassment on the way, but the GM dropped so the end was done quickly
1 that I don't know the original focus, but there was a lot of traveling and then the GM dropped and then the judge dropped, so now it has a forsaken town and lots of caves and fighting

Lasair:
2 basically totally town-based
1 that is so far only traveling but will probably have substantial portions that are based in a Sairundani town

Ally:
1 that is basically a wilderness/ruins exploration

And of the games I ran:
1 that is in some ways two that was a mix of wilderness traveling, town-based intrigue, and ruins exploration, but players dropped so it lagged in some places.
1 that was basically all city and Academy based intrigue.
1 that was basically all exploration of a strange tower--I really like this one, personally, even though it isn't city-based. Right now, though, one of the players is having a wedding anniversary with his wife in Orussus, two are chatting in Medibaria, and another is in a fiery fortress of flame and eldritch energies (guess who!).

Might I suggest waiting till 4E and L4W or whatever it's called actualy happens? Buidling the world when we don't know the rules set is jumping the gun a bit. Building it in another living forum is a bit... distracting.