Is LEW in trouble?

Out of curiosity where can the council meeting be found?

Cheers Trouvere, you are a gentleman and a scholar!

For the record, LEB ain't dead. From my perspective, its limping along and its about as alive as LEW is now. We didn't have a M-A, but several of our DMs/judges also disappeared (partly due to overlap in LEW/LEB).

Xir is my only LEW character, and missed the big M-A drive. Lucky for me, 'cuz P8008's game been fun. But that was the risk w/ a big M-A game. Living games work great in the small and not in the large for this very reason.

I think 4E (not L4W) has part to do with the die out in momentum, but I think a large part of it is that big posters (who ran games, judged, etc.) left. That left a void that is difficult to fill when there isn't enough new blood coming in. This goes for LEB as well. Players show up; but DM/Judges are needed to complete the deal. While I have hopes for L4W, it will need to be careful that a similar judge/DM diaspora does not occur in a few years time.

Note, Living Supers is dead for similar reason... DM/Judges left, and there wasn't enough player interest to step up to the role.

All in all, I think LEW/LEB is in a bit of a downturn, but are not dead yet. Until more DMs/Judges can be found, they will be necessity be smaller/fewer games. As those succeed, players will come to DM and some of those might judge. Its a slow rebuilding process, but its the one we have. Forcing it won't do it, though some gentle recruiting/advertising wouldn't hurt for either group.

I don't think LEW is dead, either, but it could use some love. Specifically, what I think we need are DMs. Judges... well, we need at least one or two active judges, to approve characters and award DM points and to end failed adventures gracefully -- I think time XP and a free ride to the RDI would suffice, in most cases -- but we can mostly get by without many judges. There are plenty of players left, I think, or there will be once the MA mess is cleaned up a bit.

As long as there are players and DMs and at least one judge, the game isn't dead.

There's a natural attrition to PbP. We do need to continually add judges, and recruit new DMs and players, to keep LEW alive. Perhaps I should start a judges' roll call.

I wonder too, if our character judging system has failed us of late. The character judges were very very good. Too good, maybe, as it took too much of their time. I submitted two of my PCs for level up months ago, and still have only received one approval each. We might consider the alternative, used on some other boards, of having the individual DM approve the level up of each character in his/her adventure. It wouldn't be as thorough, but it would be much faster and easier, and wouldn't force any game to wait.

Shall we catagorically rule the M-A closed? Are there any objections to this? I think if we did, we would free up a number of PCs. And I would prefer to see new adventures aimed at the PCs we have, as opposed to new 1st level PCs. Beyond that, I don't have a problem with raising the 3 PC limit. I know of other boards that operate fine w/o that limitation.

I'm in the same boat as Manz, I've been somewhat delayed in my posting on my own game. I've made some effort lately to power through the last few sets of encounters and the last hurray as Gemhold is freed. Let me tell you, planning a battle between 250 combattants is a bad idea in 3.5. That almost killed my game as it was so daunting to complete. I definitely agree that smaller more manageble games are the best way to go (though of course I broke that rule again with my plan for my L4W game too).

One of the reasons that I've been a bit dissillusioned with LEW lately is the M-A dying completely. Both my active characters were in there and stalled from playing = less motivation to DM. I agree with Manz and the others the M-A is dead and second his motion to close all threads. I think the players who stuck it out should be rewarded. I have a bit of time coming up this weekend potentially. I could review one of the threads and award XP to close it out. If some of the other judges or ex-judges would do the same for the other threads we can wrap it up quickly and all get back to posting in the Inn at least.

With regards to the character judges, having done it myself for LEB for a while, its too much work. We need help and I think having DMs process their own level ups is a good suggestion. Of course that means I've got like 4PCs * 3 recent level ups = 12 levels to look through. I'll admit I may have caused the delay in character judging in one fell swoop.

As for the edition thing. I've given up on most of my 3.5 games, but have more invested in LEW and would love to see Tenebrynn and Eternity continue. Waiting for the next L11-12 adventure to come along might take a while though. In addition I've got a business course coming up soon that will take up my time from Nov 25-Feb4, so I wont be taking on any more DMing and hope to finish Gemhold by then if at all possible (not likely).

I think Trouvere has hit the nail on the head. With RA disappearing, the M-A has stalled, freezing a large percentage of LEW characters. Then, with several judges having to back out of LEW, there's no one to step up and finish them. Actually, I don't think many of them were ever assigned judges.

Because of the inactivity, I'm not sure who's still around. But it seems to me this might be a good time for a changing of the guard (or infusion of new blood, or whatever cliche you prefer).

So I'll suggest the following (I'd make it a formal proposal, but I don't think we have the judges to get it passed):

Figure out how many judges we still have, and how many we need.

Also, the overall big mega-adventure may be dead, but there are a few signs of life out there. "Bizarre Bazaar," is still moving, and I think Rae may be willing to tough out "Blind Watchers" (but I think he also may want to drop it. I know he's been busy lately.)

AFAIK, the rest of the M-A adventures are dead. We need to determine which ones are really dead and have a judge step in to award final XP and end things so people can move on.

How have new judges been chosen in the past? Do current judges select nominations or does one volunteer? I've been around for a while and I'd be willing to help out. There's a few things that've made me hesitant to DM a LEW game, but I might even step up and do that.

For what it's worth, Bizarre Bazaar has only a tenuous connection to the MA, and would do just fine on its own.

Coming in here from the sidelines, as I've been disinterested here lately, I have a couple opinions. To run through the list...

PbP has always had attrition in general. One of the major advantages of LEW was that it somewhat blunted the effect of attrition since characters were persistant and you could recruit from a pool of players. Still, it's bound to happen. How many characters on the first five pages of the character thread are still active?

For one, enworld was terribly slow for a couple months this year. It frustrated me so much that I delayed my Red Hand of Doom game for 3 or so months before I was able to continue the adventure.

Then 4th edition coming out. A lot of people like it more, and would rather be playing that, regardless.

And L4W coming out. This probably has a somewhat limited effect, but it's still worth something. I'm sure some players, when confronted with a choice because of their limited time, would choose to make a character for a persistent 4e world at the beginning rather than a persistent 3e world at the figurative 'end' of the edition.

The mega-adventure really was the elephant in the room as someone put it. Having all the games floundering around (and run by one GM mostly?) really messed with stuff. It played against the strengths of the system in some ways by doing that.

Winter is always slow. Christmas season especially. That's some part.

Throw it all in a basket along with LEW not being featured prominantly on the forums (it used to be high enough up that when you looked at the general forum list you could see it on initial load, but that's not the case anymore), lack of character approvals, and some of the other issues and you can see how things would flounder.

Plus, character approval has always been a bit of a pain. When activity was high, it's problematic because there's so many to approve. Even when things are not so active, approving characters takes a great deal of time, making sure every single rule is followed correctly. It also adds a certain amount of startup time for the players wherein they have to wait quite a while to get started. You can't just jump into a proposed game very easily.

Oh, and on another point, enworld really doesn't havea lot of good play-by-post features that can be there. A dedicated messageboard could have in-line dice-rollers, access to view character sheets from the player's posts, and a lot of other stuff. Sure, we can get around it, but all I'm saying is 'it could be better'.

As for suggestions... Well I can see reasons to try to continue on. There's no reason to stop the game for people that are still enjoying it.

I would somewhat recommend a merger of sorts. I realize that thematically this doesn't make much sense, and some players would dislike the idea, but merging LEB and LEW might do some good. You would have a combined player base using the same system.

People that wanted to stay in LEW could, or you could merge into LEB following some guidelines to make the character line up. I'm not sure how much people would benefit from that though, as it probably won't solve any of the core problems.