Discussion - LEW 4th Edition

[Rystil Arden]

Ha, fair enough. What I know of Ancient Greece is actually pretty limiting - God names, some basic history, and whatnot. Though I always got the idea that Corinth was one of the wealthier cities, Athens had something sort of resembling Democracy (a citizens council, or something silly), and Delphi certainly had the Oracle.

If we do choose random names for the cities, there needs to be a way to say, very quickly, that 'City A is a militaristic city" and "City B likes magic". Something to integrate Players into the plot.

I'm curious, though - what is it that puts you against the large meta-plot idea? I personally think it's a possibility, and something that could be a lot of fun, if the judges (whoever they may be) put some work into it.

Athens, if you pick the correct time span at its Golden Age, was wealthier than Corinth. Think of Athens like America. They exploited weaker 'allies' for money and supported corrupt and murderous factions as long as they were 'pro-democracy'. Many of them had democracies of some sort, not just Athens. There were a bunch of Oracles, and there was indeed one at Delphi, but Delphi wasn't really a theocracy of any sort, such that if we made a city-state like you suggested, it would be a cool idea, but I think we could name it whatever we want without someone saying 'oh, this is just based off Delphi', since it wouldn't be based off Delphi, y'know?

@Too Many Metaplots--it's related to the 'setting consistency judges' that, as you correctly mention, are required to run it. It's a bad idea to start because it makes the living world hostile and confusing to new GMs. If you and I and several other judges got together and started making meta-events, I have no doubt that we would be very pleased with them and that a goodly subset of players and established GMs would be too, but new GMs would have to be strictly reined in 'No, you can't have the Nemean city council ask for those PCs' help. The Nemeans are allied with the Phrygians and at war with all PCs from Laconia. They'd sooner kill them all.' Also, the sheer logistics of having enough players and GMs to split the player base such that you would have a war between two factions of players is staggering and presumes we'll have more support than we actually might, plus it would lead to a PvP and high character death aspect that some players might not enjoy. I'll liken us to the gods of Olympos--from up high, we might look down on the Trojan War and watch in fascination at the excitement of the many awesome events and truly moving deaths, but as a player, it would be different. If player A is playing a Hektor equivalent and player B is playing an Akhilles equivalent, and they've been adventuring together for 7 levels, and then the Judges from on high say 'A war is happening--you now are at war and can't adventure together', they might roll with it and come up with a totally awesome 'I have to kill my best friend' super-story-appropriate roleplaying moment, or they might say 'Screw that--who are you Judges to tell me that?' and quit.

 

[Wik]

See, I didn't really see it that way at all. If we did a Trojan War, for example, I would see it as thus:

* 1 GM runs a Trojan Defender, Another runs a Greek adventure.
* Neither group really crosses paths for most of it, since each group is pursuing their own aims. Each group accrues "Victory Points", such that the Greeks would hear about the successes of Trojan adventurers, and vice versa.
* Maybe, if the VPs are pretty close, we could set up a "one on one" champion combat, winner take all. We'd have a PC death there, but I think it'd be pretty dramatic (and since the player volunteered to be a champion...).
* Afterwards, the world takes on that change - and is clearly reflected in the setting. We know, for example, that Athens has retreated from war after the battle of Troy, or that Troy is now more or less burned to the ground.

I don't really see world judges as preventing new GMs from metaplots, but perhaps guiding new GMs' input. We could clearly say "Yeah, those two nations are at peace, as we've written here... try this instead". Really, they just help keep the setting from having huge changes (and I really see a Greek-based game as being a bit more epic than LEW) go about unregulated.

 

[Rystil Arden]

See, I didn't really see it that way at all. If we did a Trojan War, for example, I would see it as thus:

* 1 GM runs a Trojan Defender, Another runs a Greek adventure.
* Neither group really crosses paths for most of it, since each group is pursuing their own aims. Each group accrues "Victory Points", such that the Greeks would hear about the successes of Trojan adventurers, and vice versa.
* Maybe, if the VPs are pretty close, we could set up a "one on one" champion combat, winner take all. We'd have a PC death there, but I think it'd be pretty dramatic (and since the player volunteered to be a champion...).
* Afterwards, the world takes on that change - and is clearly reflected in the setting. We know, for example, that Athens has retreated from war after the battle of Troy, or that Troy is now more or less burned to the ground.

I don't really see world judges as preventing new GMs from metaplots, but perhaps guiding new GMs' input. We could clearly say "Yeah, those two nations are at peace, as we've written here... try this instead". Really, they just help keep the setting from having huge changes (and I really see a Greek-based game as being a bit more epic than LEW) go about unregulated.

See, that scenario only scratches the surface, though and ignores potentially terrible consequences.

Let's say my PC lives in Troy, and we get the result 'Troy is now more or less burned to the ground'. I'm not going to like this. Especially if I have significant backstory ties in Troy not being burned to the ground. For instance, you said (and I agree it would be cool) that we should have more PCs in politics. Let's say that I spent two years out-of-game building up my PC to become a major councilor in Troy, and then the Judges had it burned to the ground. That sucks!


Now, having said all that, I will admit that I like making metaplots myself, and I have successfully placed them within my own games both in LEW and in the general Playing the Game forum (I have a sort of Living Neospelljamming thing going where all my Neospelljamming games are set in the same reality, and there are many metaplots going on between the games), though it works just because I GM so many games and because I'm the only GM. The trick is when adding more players and GMs, it gets very hairy on a large scale.

 

[Wik]

Troy was an example - and, at least how I was thinking it, I didn't expect there to be too many Trojan PCs. Yeah, it would suck if you had a Trojan PC trying to make it in Trojan politics, but as I was thinking it, no one would, because it was too "off-screen". We're not nuking major locations - we're making big changes on the periphery of the world, while trying to keep the core locations stable.

Another example would be, say, Pompeii. It's on the map, but no one's really done much with it. Then, we run an adventure where a cult is tryign to destroy it. This becomes a big meta-plot, with some PCs (allies of Greece, who see Pompeii as a threat, maybe) trying to help in it's destruction (While at the same time hoping many of the people on the island survive) while another group says "Greece be damned" and tries to stop the cult.

Once the adventure is over, Pompeii either a) Becomes a regular power in the world, and is more recognized by PCs, or b) is a lava-encrusted wasteland, and a few years down the road, one PC mentions how he did his best to save it, and the New players look at that, and go "wow... that PC is a HERO".

 

[Wik]

Or, to put it in another way, there's nothing stopping a GM from running a war adventure in LEW. But there's also no real way to make the effects of that war *real* for the players in the game afterwards. Essentially, I don't want to make big changes to the core of the campaign world - I want to make small changes to the rest of the world occur as a direct result of PC actions, and I want to make that a key conceit of the living campaign. And I think a few world judges would help make that a reality.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Or, to put it in another way, there's nothing stopping a GM from running a war adventure in LEW. But there's also no real way to make the effects of that war *real* for the players in the game afterwards. Essentially, I don't want to make big changes to the core of the campaign world - I want to make small changes to the rest of the world occur as a direct result of PC actions, and I want to make that a key conceit of the living campaign. And I think a few world judges would help make that a reality.

I think then, that I misunderstood your intentions and that you want things more like what really actually do happen in LEW (shared cities, albeit minor ones, have been completely destroyed). PC groups have been at odds (one group hates Noble X and killed an innocent peasant messenger in cold blood, the other takes a bounty on group 1 from the Noble, delivered by the orphaned son of the messenger). And much much much bigger things (even bigger than some of your examples!) are coming in the Mega-Adventure. You just want it more formalised, I guess, which should be fine.

Also, now I see that you want the PCs on the Trojan side to be more like Penthesilea and less like Hektor. That would be more acceptable. Essentially, what I was saying with respect to Meta-Plots (fewer and smaller), is really what you wanted to do in the first place!

 

[Wik]

Yeah. I'm thinking we could get experienced GMs to run some mutually-agreed upon metaplots, to keep things interesting, and individual GMs could run their own metaplots.

Everything could change the world (with the idea that the further you go from the core area, the more damage you can do!). I just think "world judges" - judges who actively update and consider the setting - would allow GMs to have some flexibility and say in their adventures.

The example I think of is the fact that I felt that by introducing the Blacklilies (a very small group of thieves), I may have been adding too much to Orussus. And I would never burn down a building in the main city - and I think a lot of GMs have that sort of drive in living games. "I can only destroy something if I created it first".

World judges would allow places that have been marked on the map to be somewhat dynamic, so that GMs who like to make changes to a place don't have to add to the map. Keeping the setting smaller, and thus more recognizeable (and connected!) than LEW.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Yeah. I'm thinking we could get experienced GMs to run some mutually-agreed upon metaplots, to keep things interesting, and individual GMs could run their own metaplots.

Everything could change the world (with the idea that the further you go from the core area, the more damage you can do!). I just think "world judges" - judges who actively update and consider the setting - would allow GMs to have some flexibility and say in their adventures.

The example I think of is the fact that I felt that by introducing the Blacklilies (a very small group of thieves), I may have been adding too much to Orussus. And I would never burn down a building in the main city - and I think a lot of GMs have that sort of drive in living games. "I can only destroy something if I created it first".

World judges would allow places that have been marked on the map to be somewhat dynamic, so that GMs who like to make changes to a place don't have to add to the map. Keeping the setting smaller, and thus more recognizeable (and connected!) than LEW.

You might be surprised, actually. I admit that I personally do walk on eggshells when I don't have all the info about an area (I hate GMing in Orussus because I feel that I'll never have all the info), but I've found that many GMs do not have this compunction and are perfectly willing to change, destroy, or simply not bother to ever know in the first place many important setting details.

Frex, after I collected all outstanding pieces of information in all of LEW about Medibaria, I then increased that information one-hundred-fold with my own details. So far, I haven't seen any GM use it, though.

Of course, setting judges could help with that too!

I have to say, I'm really excited about L4W now. I hope that the excitement of the brainstormers can translate into equal excitement for players and GMs when the setting comes to pass!

 

[Wik]

See, yeah, that's where I think Setting Judges would *really* help. I wanted to set a game in that place that had the festival of Halina, but I really didn't want to do research and thread-digging to find it.

And, yeah, I'm getting pretty excited by it, too. When was that date we had set up for getting started initially? January? February? I'd really like to know what's down the road, so I can start getting ready to start pitching ideas to become a judge on this thing.

If it catches, I think L4W is probably going to wind up being the best living campaign we've got going - provided 4e doesn't suck. But if 4e does suck, I say we go retro and run it 3.5E. Ha.

 

[Bront]

@Bront--Unless you think that Greek mythology actually happened, I would say that it is fantasy too, y'know?

It did. I saw it on TV. Hurcules and Xena were documentries, right?


After all this historical discussion, I'll warn again about getting too tied into actual history. You can have fun with city states and not be greek per say (Dark Sun did it fairly well), and those that are not big history buffs will feel more left out if there is a default to a particular historical ideal. This should be a fun to explore fantasy world, that has enough details to let some GMs and players run with it, but be vague enough to let players and GMs built it though adventures and character growth as well.

LEW started off very small, and I think we're aiming to start it off bigger than that, but be careful about going into too much detail to start. I've heard people complain that LEW is to hard to jump into now because it is so detailed (I disagree, but I'm making a point), and there are some who will not run an LEB adventure because they don't want to contridict published material.

Now, don't take this to mean we shouldn't be specifics, or develop the world, but I think that we should be wary of starting out with information overload, particularly when we're already dealing with a new game system in 4E, which will be daunting enough.