Living 4th Edition Discussion Thread

garyh · Aug 6, 2008

Atanatotatos said:
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.

Good point. I can see actually waiving the pre-approval requirement and waiting period for official WotC playtest material, as long as we have a caveat that the character could be revoked later when the final version is released if the final version is not approved for L4W (with the swap of a same level character allowed to replace the in-the-end-disallowed character).

Erekose13 · Aug 6, 2008

I know you guys are keen on opening this up to as much content as possible, which is great from a player perspective ~ more choice is better. Do be careful from a DM perspective (forcing DMs to have access to all material included is a big burden on someone thinking of running a 4e game without a huge library) and from a Judge perspective (reviewing all submitted material as well as owning that huge library). I would still council 6 months for the printed products. For LEB I was on the leading edge of proposing new material but even with the 6 month period it was tough for all the other judges to keep up with purchasing, reading, and judging material. There will be a lot of new content over the next year from WotC for 4e as they continue to put out suppliments.

Atanatotatos · Aug 6, 2008

I know what you mean, but it'll be tough saying people they can't play sorcerers, druids or barbarians when they come out...
We obviously need to operate a selection, but there are some thing anybody'd like to be able to play

renau1g · Aug 6, 2008

I agree with Erekose, if this is the format that the other 'Living' sites are using, we might want to look at their experience as an asset.

I know I don't have the funds to purchase many of the new supplements (my wife & I just had twins), unlike 3e, where I have shelves full. I don't know everyone else's situation, but I think we might be a bit aggressive with the 3 month window. If we wait 6 months all the bugs will be worked out and holes plugged and give the judges time to decide on the relevent material.

garyh · Aug 6, 2008

Since 6 months seems to be as fast as has been feasible with other living games, I think it's probably wise to follow their example to start, and we can always change it letter. Like Atanatotatos, though, I think there might be things we ought to / could move faster. Maybe for the PHB series we can have 3 month windows, since if ANYTHING will be universally owned, it'll be those, and for campaign guides, power books, etc. we can stick with 6 months.

covaithe · Aug 6, 2008

garyh said:
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.

+1. Both of these are things I've been meaning to try to do when I got around to it. Which hasn't happened yet. :-/

Atanatotatos · Aug 6, 2008

garyh said:
Since 6 months seems to be as fast as has been feasible with other living games, I think it's probably wise to follow their example to start, and we can always change it letter. Like Atanatotatos, though, I think there might be things we ought to / could move faster. Maybe for the PHB series we can have 3 month windows, since if ANYTHING will be universally owned, it'll be those, and for campaign guides, power books, etc. we can stick with 6 months.

seems a good idea to me. I also propose a different treatment in general for playtesting material. If we allow it faster we can actually contribute to its development.

garyh · Aug 6, 2008

I agree on allowing playtest material, with caveats, as I outlined in post #21.

renau1g · Aug 6, 2008

What are LEW's restrictions on things from other campaign settings... i.e does it allow things like FRCS, EBCS, Dragonlance...etc. into it (all of these had official 3e releases from WOTC).

I'm wondering how they could manage to work those into the game...

garyh · Aug 6, 2008

renau1g said:
What are LEW's restrictions on things from other campaign settings... i.e does it allow things like FRCS, EBCS, Dragonlance...etc. into it (all of these had official 3e releases from WOTC).

I'm wondering how they could manage to work those into the game...

There are plenty of things in campaign books that are easily portable into another campaign world. I mean, really, what does the swordmage have to do with FR in the first place? Even things like warforged, which are part of the history of Eberron, are pretty easy to carry over to another setting. Then again, I can't see really specific stuff like Dragonmarked Houses fitting into other settings easily...

EDITED to add that I think it comes down to players submitting specific portions of new books that they want to use and having the judges approve those portions. For the FRPG, the obvious chunks would be swordmage, genasi, and drow. Other books, like Martial Power, I think will be trickier. We may not necessarily want to approve EVERYTHING in Martial Power, for example, but without going through it and voting power by power, not sure how you handle it, as it doesn't look to have have nice chunks like FRPG or PHB2 (gnome, barbarian, druid, etc.).