Interest Check: Story-Driven Eberron Campaign

I have been building up the idea for an Eberron campaign for over two years now and the idea will not leave me alone. But given the nature of the campaign I would like to run, I think it would be best to run it as a play-by-post game as opposed to a tabletop game. So I will outline what I am thinking about below and I would like to know if anyone would be interested in this type of game.

I want to run a story-driven campaign which focuses on the political intrigue between the many factions within Eberron. This would not be a very classic type of D&D game in the sense that it would not involve a lot of dungeon-crashing. (This is not to say there would be no dungeons, merely that killing monsters and looting dungeons would not be the focus of the game.) Rather, it would highlight the strife that exists in Eberron in the wake of the end of the Last War. Many factions are vying for power and a place in the new world order after a hundred years of war, and the PCs would be caught up in the middle of it, forced to choose sides between the lesser of two evils or putting together the pieces of broken organizations in exchange for material and favor-based rewards. For example, the Church of the Silver Flame could ask the PCs to assist them in cleansing an ancient mausoleum of the taint of evil that was left to fester while the Last War took place. In exchange, they might offer the PCs their choice of a weapon or implement made of flametouched iron or spellcasting services.

The setting would be the City of Sharn, where many adventurers are made. The rules would be based on 3.5 (as Eberron was built specifically as a 3.5 setting), but simplified somewhat. Owing to the exceptional roleplaying that is possible in play-by-post, combat would be streamlined somewhat so that tactical maps were not necessary and combat could move along more quickly. I would probably do a simultaneous initiative system where players all declare their intended actions, then I roll initiative (behind the screen) to see in what order those actions get resolved. This would allow for players to post their actions for a combat round in their own time rather than waiting for their turn, which should speed things up, but might make combat more unpredictable.

I would also use simplified character creation options. I want to use a simpler skill system such as Maximum Ranks, Limited Choices or Level-Based Skills. I may also limit feats to those available in the three core rule books plus the Eberron Campaign Setting. I may choose to limit feats in a different way, but this is a good benchmark for now. I may also choose to use a standard ability score array rather than have players roll ability scores or use a point buy. The intent here is to reduce the amount of time dedicated to character building because the emphasis is on story. Furthermore, I believe this would make it easier to bring new players into the game as character creation would not take a great deal of time.

Character advancement may also be slowed. Eberron is a world with few characters above 10th-level in experience. And with the emphasis on story and fewer opportunities for character advancement by simple monster slaying, the experience points earned would be less than seen in a typical D&D campaign.

Experience with or knowledge of the Eberron setting would not be necessary. I plan to introduce elements of the setting slowly to the characters, as all characters will begin young and fairly naive in the first place. They would learn about the setting as they go. All you would really need to know are the Ten Important Facts.

Finally, the adventures themselves would generally be short, and each would be part of a sub-plot within the game. For example, I may run three short adventures involving a patron of House Cannith who wants the PCs to recover important items that were lost during the Last War. Each of these adventures would be self-contained and teach the PCs a little bit about House Cannith. They may be run in a single contiguous story-arc or spread out between different story arcs. The shortness of the adventures would generally accelerate the feeling of accomplishment that is often delayed in PBP to help keep players interested. Many of these adventures would feature only one key encounter.

And before anyone mentions it, I know about Living Eberron and am not interested in it for my own reasons.

So these are some of the ideas I am thinking about. Would there be any interest in a game like this?

Edit: For those reading this for the first time, I have added some proposed house rules for skills.

Color me interested. Character creation for PBP is daunting and tedious, so any solutions you might have would be swell. Also, Eberron.

I definitely want to make character creation much easier. Along those lines, starting items would probably be limited to one standard adventurer's kit (as per the PH2) plus choice of one weapon and one suit of leather armor or scale mail and a light shield (if proficient). Something else I am thinking of doing is having feats be pre-selected, possibly following the templates from the PH2. I would still allow for customization in game by offering retraining, but to start characters would be pretty simple. Essentially I would like for players to need choose only race, class, and alignment.

I might be interested, as I like the idea of a 'high-roleplaying' game, but I have a lot on my plate at the moment, so I'll hold off.

Also, while I understand that speeding up character creation is helpful, simplifying it has its downsides. Having mechanically cookie-cutter characters doesn't seem conducive to fleshing out concepts. For example, the concept that comes to my mind is a fighter who's smarter than he looks. So I'd put some extra points into intelligence, probably going for the combat expertise feat chain.

It might be better to provide 'baseline' characters which can then be used as-is or modified as the player sees fit. It's easier to modify than to start from scratch; for example, you don't have to look up how many skill points you have or how many spells you start with.

Also, many players enjoy character creation and optimization. For them (sometimes me), it's not just a preliminary step before playing; it's a fun part of the game. However, and especially at high level, it does become too tedious and time consuming.

Well what I am really looking at is a character creation process which will create basic characters that can jump right in. Then as time goes on, players can customize characters by swapping out feats, multiclassing, and so on. I may actually start players at level 0. At this point they would have a d4 hit die, limited skills, no feats, and no bonus to saving throws. After gaining 500 XP they would transform into a 1st level heroic character. One thing I want is organic character development. I have played in too many games where the players map out their characters from level 1 to 20 before they even sit down for the first game, and it is usually focused on the combat side of things. I want a game where a player might actually consider taking the Negotiator feat because it will make him a better negotiator instead of just picking the feat that will help him kill monsters the quickest. I may come up with side benefits for these kinds of feats to accentuate the skill bonuses.

I am still working on the concept though. Feedback is welcome.

If you want a lot of roleplaying of social situations, you might consider getting rid of social skills altogether, because they lead to roll-playing those situations.

If you don't want to do that, one modest reform I would suggest is getting rid of the d20 roll for diplomacy: the DM simply judges the effectiveness of what the PC said, taking his skill into account. Also, NPCs pretty much act based on their motivations no matter what; intimidate and diplomacy sometimes should be useless. As for sense motive, obviously there should be a chance to think someone's lying even when he's telling the truth.

In addition (not a replacement) for the above changes, you may like Rich Burlew's thoughts on fixing the extremely poorly thought-out D&D diplomacy skill here.

If you can get these broken skills under control, I can see them playing an important role in a campaign.

Thank you for some excellent suggestions, kinem. And thank you for linking me to Rich Burlew's modified Diplomacy skill. I remember reading that some time ago and thinking it was well thought-out and a much better version of the skill than the version in the core rules. I believe I will incorporate it into this game if I get it running.

I agree that social skills will need some work in other regards. For example, I agree with your position on Sense Motive; a possibility of suspecting someone is lying even if they are not is an interesting one. Sense Motive is one of those skills which I have always felt works best when rolled by the DM behind a screen because otherwise the information can easily be meta-gamed. If a PC rolls a 1 on his Sense Motive check, he is automatically going to assume that he failed and disregard any information the DM gives him. However, I like the idea of hidden modifiers to account for things such as in Rich's Diplomacy skill. A situation the PC is not aware of might influence the outcome without the player's actual knowledge. The NPC might be a pathological liar and therefore have very hard-to-notice tells, or the NPC might be so extremely nervous that anything he says appears to be a lie. Ideally, I would like a situation where the PC can use Sense Motive without the need for secrecy in the roll and still feel like he has enough control over the situation to know whether his roll might be close enough for reliable information or not. I feel like I am droning on here so I will conclude by saying I will probably want to re-work Sense Motive (as well as other skills like Gather Information) and would be interested in hearing ideas.

I want to keep social skills in the game and I want to keep the d20. There is always an element of luck to any social situation and that is what the d20 accounts for. Within that framework, I am open to suggestions and will do a little research of my own. I believe there are some interesting uses for social skills with Skill Tricks, for example.

I am certainly interested in this...

I've long wanted to and never had the chance to get involved in a roleplay oriented game that takes place in Sharn.

Good to know there is some more interest in this.

So I am going to "think out loud" for a second on what would need some adjustment in regards to skills and how they work for a campaign with an emphasis on social interaction. Others can feel free to chime in. I want social skills to offer options, but not pure solutions. In other words, skills should not preclude the need for roleplaying, they should offer additional dialogue options for the roleplaying to take.

The first skill is Bluff. This skill is relatively well-written, but if I use Rich Burlew's Diplomacy skill changes, it negates a lot of use for the skill. One possible option is to combine the skill with Diplomacy. Another is to leave it alone. It might not need fixing, but it deserves a looking at.

The next skill is Disguise. I rather like the way this skill works, but it does not get used nearly as often as it could. Why is that? Is it because the skill is too complicated or because the results are too vague? I am not sure. Using Disguise to get a better relationship status for purposes of Diplomacy seems like a reasonable use. But then we are talking about two rolls for basically one purpose. Maybe they could be combined? Maybe Disguise needs to be simplified? Just thoughts.

Another skill is Forgery. The skill seems at the outset to be far too simple for use in an Eberron campaign where identity papers, marques, and the like are extremely important. On the other hand the Eberron books offer some insight on how to handle Forgery in an Eberron campaign so maybe this one needs no modification.

Yet another skill is Gather Information. This one needs a lot of clarification. What I want is for Gather Information to specify the DCs for specific types of information as well as modifiers for situations. Are you gathering information on general rumors, a pulse of the rumor mill, if you will? Are you investigating the habits of a well-known lord? Are you looking into the location of a secret meeting place of an exclusive guild? I believe I will need to come up with some tables for these things, as well as some consequences for failure. Another thing to consider is time taken. The more secretive the information, the longer something should take. So the 1d4+1 hours per check rule will need elaboration.

The next skill is Intimidate. Taken with Rich Burlew's Diplomacy rules, Intimidate can be used to alter the effective relationship modifier for a situation. That might be all that is needed to keep this skill working. Another option is to make it a variant form of Diplomacy. Yet another option is to combine the two skills into one and simply base the method off the roleplaying.

The next skill is Knowledge. This skill will need more elaboration based on the kind of knowledge sought and the time it takes for an answer. I think this is a small modification though. It should not be too complicated.

The next skill is Perform. I am uncertain whether this needs elaboration. Perhaps it could be expanded to include seduction. But that could easily be covered by Bluff.

The next skill is Sense Motive. I think this skill needs more work than any other. This has already been discussed earlier in the thread.

I do not want all of this to get too complicated though. Ideally, I would like a template for all social skills so that each one is not its own sub-system. I am thinking right now of basing that template on Rich Burlew's Diplomacy skill. Furthermore I will probably remove synergy bonuses entirely. They are unnecessary book-keeping as far as I am concerned.

So these are some of my thoughts. Commentary is welcome.

One of the other concepts I want to utilize in this game is a patron system. Each of the PCs will have a patron who is of the same class as the PC and has taught the PC what he or she knows up to this point. If I decide to go with a zero-level option, then choice of patron may be a role playing decision. Otherwise it will part of character background. The patron will act as a mentor and guide, but ultimately allow the PC to choose his or her own path. So the patrons could be consulted for advice and training but would not involve themselves directly in PC affairs.