Wik
First Post
So, about three months ago, I started work on a new campaign world. My goal was to have it ready for when we finished up the Savage Tide (I expect to be finished around May, actually!).
For the first little while, I was having a bit of trouble picking which rules to focus on from my vast 3.5 library. My campaign was focused around dragons ruling the land, so I knew I wanted to use Dragon Magic (with sorcerers using Dragonpacts acting as the proxy for their personal dragon lord).
But then... well, there's a lot of "related to dragons" material out there, and I was getting flummoxed by the options. Do I include half-dragons? How do Dragon Shamans fit into the game? Dragon Aspirants? And so on, and so forth.
And it wasn't just this campaign. For the past ten years or so (definately before 3e ever existed), whenever it was time to make a new campaign world, I would dig through my books and pick where I wanted the game to be centred. Either it was the time I grabbed three or four "Complete" books in the 2e days and said "my game will focus on this area", or the countless times I'd poke through alternate rules sources (such as Unearthed Arcana) and use them to make the basis of my flavour of the month.
In the end, it always seemed like rules trumped the setting. That's not to say that my worlds were vanilla in any way - they had histories, depth, and interesting locales, to be sure. It was just that they were defined by the rules I had selected before drawing that first map.
Then, something strange happened. 4e was announced.
I realized quickly that we would never play in this campaign world using the 3.5E rules (I'm one of those people who will switch to 4e, whether or not I have misgivings). But we would still be done STAP in May, and there'd still be a gap.
So the campaign still needs to get written.
I'm in a curious position right now, in that I'm writing a campaign for a rules system that does not technically exist yet. And I'm really enjoying the experience.
Rather than before, when I was tryign to find a way to fit druids, warmages, wu jen, and warlocks all into the same world (and let things make sense), I can just make broad references to rules I know will exist, and firmly say what can and cannot exist.
I'm focusing more and more on the actual setting, as opposed to rules elements of a setting, which is where I used to spend roughly 75% of my time. And the great thing about all of this is an agreement I reached with my players - once 4e is released, we are using only the core books in the game (and they may be modified to fit the world!), and then anything additional will be added on a case-by-case basis.
I guess the question here is this: have you ever tried to make a campaign world that was rules-neutral, or for a rules system that doesn't currently exist? Is anyone making a 4e campaign world right now, even though they know little about 4e itself?
For the first little while, I was having a bit of trouble picking which rules to focus on from my vast 3.5 library. My campaign was focused around dragons ruling the land, so I knew I wanted to use Dragon Magic (with sorcerers using Dragonpacts acting as the proxy for their personal dragon lord).
But then... well, there's a lot of "related to dragons" material out there, and I was getting flummoxed by the options. Do I include half-dragons? How do Dragon Shamans fit into the game? Dragon Aspirants? And so on, and so forth.
And it wasn't just this campaign. For the past ten years or so (definately before 3e ever existed), whenever it was time to make a new campaign world, I would dig through my books and pick where I wanted the game to be centred. Either it was the time I grabbed three or four "Complete" books in the 2e days and said "my game will focus on this area", or the countless times I'd poke through alternate rules sources (such as Unearthed Arcana) and use them to make the basis of my flavour of the month.
In the end, it always seemed like rules trumped the setting. That's not to say that my worlds were vanilla in any way - they had histories, depth, and interesting locales, to be sure. It was just that they were defined by the rules I had selected before drawing that first map.
Then, something strange happened. 4e was announced.
I realized quickly that we would never play in this campaign world using the 3.5E rules (I'm one of those people who will switch to 4e, whether or not I have misgivings). But we would still be done STAP in May, and there'd still be a gap.
So the campaign still needs to get written.
I'm in a curious position right now, in that I'm writing a campaign for a rules system that does not technically exist yet. And I'm really enjoying the experience.
Rather than before, when I was tryign to find a way to fit druids, warmages, wu jen, and warlocks all into the same world (and let things make sense), I can just make broad references to rules I know will exist, and firmly say what can and cannot exist.
I'm focusing more and more on the actual setting, as opposed to rules elements of a setting, which is where I used to spend roughly 75% of my time. And the great thing about all of this is an agreement I reached with my players - once 4e is released, we are using only the core books in the game (and they may be modified to fit the world!), and then anything additional will be added on a case-by-case basis.
I guess the question here is this: have you ever tried to make a campaign world that was rules-neutral, or for a rules system that doesn't currently exist? Is anyone making a 4e campaign world right now, even though they know little about 4e itself?
