Living 4th Edition Discussion Thread

Erekose13 · Aug 10, 2008

I think (and I could be wrong and just putting words into Graf's mouth) but that he meant having 4 facilitators means 1 nay stops a vote from passing because there isn't a 4th yea to be had. All because there are 4 facilitators and not 5.

garyh · Aug 10, 2008

I'd prefer 5 facilitators, too, Erekose, but do you have any ideas? You, Bront, and Renau1g are (I think) the only other people active in these discussions right now. Are any of you folks interested?

Graf · Aug 11, 2008

Actually was I just looking for 3 yeses or one objection. One objection and we work with the objector to fashion a solution that they appreciate.

Personally? I think that people don't vote sometimes because they are satisfied that things are going to turn out fine.
[sblock=In the US]50% of the people don't vote. I often skip elections. I've always argued that I skip elections because 1. I'm indifferent between the two candidates or 2. My vote won't matter (my home state's pretty solidly in one category).

Most of the friends I've talked to tend to argue that whatever my reasons for voting are the vast majority of people "really want to vote and have their opinions heard, but don't".

I'm not sure that I buy that. Maybe I think that people feel more enabled than they really are.[/sblock]

Anyway, I've made my push.
I'm happy to let other people wrestle with the facilitator thing. I'll keep an eye out and go with whatever's decided.

I -would- point out: we're elected facilitators, not judges. It's a temporary thing.
AND
We have very little momentum right now. Waiting for some new group to appear and bless or curse our initiative (now that we're in a forum that nobody goes to) isn't probably going to work out.

But a day or two won't matter.

[d]--[/d]

I think we need to start working seriously on the setting thing.

roadmap said:
The roadmap had the election of facilitators triggering a lot of stuff
1. Submission of characters and adventures
2. Charter (the necessity of which I'm dubious of... I like a simple vision statement) could an existing judge explain what the charter is supposed to do?
3. Setting proposals are discussed
They create a poll, with options like: "We should go with setting A and start playing immediately", "We should go with setting B and start playing immediately", "We should keep talking about it for a while first". Leave the poll open for a while, say two weeks, and if at the end of that time the facilitators determine that "Setting B and start right now" has won convincingly, we are ready to play.

4. Setting votes triggered "when judged ready".

Personally I think it's going to be hellish trying to take adventure and character submissions with no world idea.
And it's unfair to people who are submitting, since whatever we approve will have to be changed later when the setting is adopted (especially if it's not a modular setting).

[d]--[/d]

I think somebody needs to decide the following:
1. How much a setting needs before we vote on it
2. How we vote on a setting (the roadmap says we go setting by setting) - I was thinking meta->actual setting but nobody seems to like doing meta discussions so maybe we should just throw it open with a bunch of options?
3. What's required for a character submission (I think/hope renau1g is working on a new character sheet based on GK's original). I really want a section where people "show their math". I.e. how they got each number.
I also want to see a roleplaying section like

from renu1gs game with mods said:
Name:
Region of origin: (Daunton, Kingdom of Jade, etc)
Race:
Class:
Background:
Appearance:
Personality (including quirks):
Kicker: See here or here
Hooks: (missing relative, want to become the most famous explorer in the world, whatever)

4. What we need to support character creation
5. Are we going to have DM points, or something else to reward DMs for running games?

stonegod · Aug 11, 2008

Still on vacation, but answering a lot stuff.

covaithe said:
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?

Use PHB rules. If folks can afford it, it can happen.

covaithe said:
Likewise, retirement. Both LEW and LEB include mechanisms for retiring a character...

Allow retirement, but start them at same character level (DMG rules).

Bront said:
I don't think you should allow "Playtesting" material...

Graf said what is currently accepted it closed, but I want to re-iterate Bront's point here. Don't do it. I want to play an artificer, but its dangerous for a long term thing w/ no single point of control.

covaithe said:
Ok, I'm convinced enough that players -- and probably DMs -- won't be hampered by lack of access to new stuff. But what about judges? ...

E13 and I were the only regular judges to have everything; Bront would get some stuff, RA borrow stuff from his brother. Generally, we tried to make sure the majority of the judges had access to the material. PHs will be less difficult than * Powers.

Graf · Aug 11, 2008

Welcome back sg!

I very much appreciate that stonegod and Bront are sharing with us important experiences but...

but on this point

stonegod said:
E13 and I were the only regular judges to have everything; Bront would get some stuff, RA borrow stuff from his brother. Generally, we tried to make sure the majority of the judges had access to the material. PHs will be less difficult than * Powers.

I just wanted to point out the existence of the DnD Compendium. Right now it's free and you can see ever power, every racial ability, every magic item.

If they ever manage to get it off the ground and start charging for it?
A player who wants to play non-core can be required to email their DM a copy of all powers, etc that aren't core. Pretty simple.

There are reasons not to allow access to powers, but lack of book ownership isn't one of them.

covaithe · Aug 11, 2008

I'm very reluctant to rely on the Compendium, mostly because it's run by WotC, who, while I love their printed products, have demonstrated time and again that they suck at software. (*cough*gleemax*cough*) On the other hand, I think that documenting powers by email will work fine if judges or DMs don't have access to it any other way. So I'm reasonably happy about that.

I wrote something about facilitators here, but I'm going to go paste it into the facilitators thread instead.

renau1g · Aug 11, 2008

garyh said:
I'd prefer 5 facilitators, too, Erekose, but do you have any ideas? You, Bront, and Renau1g are (I think) the only other people active in these discussions right now. Are any of you folks interested?

I'd be interested, if Bront or Erekose aren't. Let me know!

Graf said:
3. What's required for a character submission (I think/hope renau1g is working on a new character sheet based on GK's original).

I'll get started, I usually don't check the site on weekends.

Graf said:
I just wanted to point out the existence of the DnD Compendium. Right now it's free and you can see ever power, every racial ability, every magic item.

For now that's a distinct possibility, but I'm sure eventually WOTC will charge for it, and, if I understand things right, you won't have access to all of the material from the expansion books, unless you buy them? I could be wrong, though.

Erekose13 · Aug 11, 2008

As with SG I'm not going to be able to devote the time to being a facilitator or judge for L4W but I'm definitely available for comment and feedback.

garyh · Aug 11, 2008

renau1g said:
I'd be interested, if Bront or Erekose aren't. Let me know!

We'd be happy to have you aboard! Please post your interest in the facilitator thread so everyone can see we've got a 5th.

garyh · Aug 12, 2008

I had a thought about drumming up more interest in the project. Simple, but hopefully effective...

Add a blurb and links to this forum in your sig. I've already done so. I figure that we all are in PbP games, so this will expose other PbP'ers to L4E. Plus, we post elsewhere on the boards, of course, so we might get other folks not currently PbP'ing interested in L4E, too.