Living 4th Edition Discussion Thread

garyh · Aug 5, 2008

Erekose13 said:
Either way I'd suggest sticking with a proposal system for all material entering the game. I would not encourage the automatic approval of material after that time. The illusionist spells, the new FR/EB race stuff, and new classes (swordmage and artificer) should all be proposed and have discussion from the community before judges vote.

Oh, I totally agree, Erekose13! There absolutely should be judge review for anything outside the PHB (yes, I'd even say judge review on MM races). I'm just thinking about how long the material should be available before, assuming judge approval towards the end of that period, it's allowed in the game.

Erekose13 · Aug 5, 2008

Thinking back over the reasoning for the 6 month delay, I agree that it is inappropriate for free online material up for consideration. After 6 months much of that material will have faded from memory for many people. I only hope that all the currently free D&DI material remains free. For purchased material I'm not so sure about changing it. But I guess that is the nature of online material, it will always be transitive in some way.

garyh · Aug 5, 2008

Erekose13 said:
Thinking back over the reasoning for the 6 month delay, I agree that it is inappropriate for free online material up for consideration. After 6 months much of that material will have faded from memory for many people. I only hope that all the currently free D&DI material remains free. For purchased material I'm not so sure about changing it. But I guess that is the nature of online material, it will always be transitive in some way.

Agreed, in 6 months online stuff may be forgotten. On the other hand, we shouldn't let it in the game the week it's posted. Thus, my 3 month suggestion, but I could see a case for an even shorter review period for free online material.

covaithe · Aug 5, 2008

I'm not sure there has to be a built in cooldown period for new content, necessarily. It could work equally well if it were just a convention that the judges would usually be cautious about letting in new material if it wasn't thoroughly discussed for a while. That would give the judges the option of rubber-stamping trivial changes or things that are mostly fluff or whatever.

I had a read through the Guide to LEW and Guide to LEB the other day. They're fairly similar, and we can probably re-use most of the language ourselves. A few things stood out to me as things to look at more closely.

Death and resurrection. In 3.5e, death is a fairly serious penalty, and most characters are unlikely to be able to afford a Raise Dead spell for many levels. The 4e Raise Dead ritual is much cheaper, and the penalty is much lighter, but it still requires a middling-level caster. How do we want to handle death? Will NPCs able to Raise Dead be common? Rare? Or is this something we want to defer to setting proposals?

Likewise, retirement. Both LEW and LEB include mechanisms for retiring a character and creating a new one, one level lower than the retired character, with some limits on equipment purchase. The equipment guidelines in the DMG for creating a new character higher than level 1 seem a little off to me at low levels

I'm sure there's more, and I hope other people will cast an eye over those posts and see what else we need to consider here.

garyh · Aug 6, 2008

I'm thinking now that we have a group, a forum, and a new discussion thread (that doesn't have 10+ intimidating pages starting from June '07), we should advertise in Talking the Talk and the LEW forum. Maybe a sticky saying "If you're interested in helping start Living 4th Edition, please join this group, visit the forum, participate in the discussion, and have a drink at the tavern," with appropriate links and a brief intro the the Living World concept. I think now that we've got a group but not a top-tier forum, we're at risk of not being visible enough to draw in the new folks who will help build L4E.

Also, I think we should make specific outreach efforts to LEW/LEB judges, as they're probably the most experienced folks around on how to handle Living worlds. Make it clear we're not asking them to be L4E judges, and are just asking for advice.

garyh · Aug 6, 2008

covaithe said:
I'm not sure there has to be a built in cooldown period for new content, necessarily...

I had a read through the Guide to LEW and Guide to LEB the other day. They're fairly similar, and we can probably re-use most of the language ourselves. A few things stood out to me as things to look at more closely.

Death and resurrection...

Likewise, retirement...

I think using the LEW and LEB guides as a template makes prefect sense. No need to reinvent the wheel. As for specifics...

I'm fine with reducing the waiting period on new content. I think 1 month for free content and 3 months for pay content is probably plenty, really, but any advice from LEW/LEB judges would be appreciated.

I tend to think having someone in the starting town who can raise heroic tier characters would be a good idea, but I think that probably should be part of the setting proposals.

I'm fine with including retirement. Makes a lot of sense, and I think sticking with the official rules for creating higher level characters is easiest.

renau1g · Aug 6, 2008

I agree with the raise dead availability, we'll need to address it in the campaign world, but there should be some mechanism for PC's to be able to raise themselves, perhaps even a higher charge than the PHB price?

renau1g · Aug 6, 2008

As for the 'free' information from DDI, I didn't think Swordmage was actually there (just a portion of it) and likewise with the genasis, etc. They were only a preview of a book to be released with some of the information from it. I really would be hesitant about allowing it based on that, then when the sourcebook comes out its unbalanced (which WOTC has a habit of doing with splat books and I'm not sure how much time they'll spend balancing the Dragon info)

Personally that's why I was hesitant about allowing it, because so far Dungeon has been frought with errors and poor editing, while Dragon has been pretty good. However, books take at least a few months in development and the designers will probably spend more time balancing the new rules, but if they need to churn out new stuff every month for DDI, I'm concerned that they'll release unbalanced rules. I believe even under Paizo's watch that happened quite a bit (a half-minotaur comes to mind)

garyh · Aug 6, 2008

Swordmage, genasi, and drow were all in a Living FR-prompted FRPG preview, not even DDI proper. The swordmage is definitely not complete (class features, and some powers up to level 3), but even the genasi and drow are missing vital info. While we got what looks like all of the main race entry, it's strongly implied there are racial feats elsewhere in the FRPG.

I think a line needs to be drawn between truely free DDI content like the warforged and preview stuff like the playtest artificer (which will be going into a pay product once it reaches final form) or product previews. I don't think anything should be allowed based only on a preview.

Atanatotatos · Aug 6, 2008

Wait. I agree on the swordmage. But the artificer is not a preview, it's a playtest, so it actually makes a lot of sense allowing it, so we can contribute as a community to the final class...
Anyway, 1 month for free products, three for the others seem good. Six months is a lot of time.