Discussion - LEW 4th Edition

[Knight Otu]

My impression so far is that the default setting is far less described than some people believe. It seems to be mostly name-dropping, such as the ancient tiefling and dragonborn empires, around which we'd have to build an actual setting anyway. There should be no such problems with the default pantheon, but that is from what I heard built around adventurer life, not setting necessities, so it'll have gaps as well. The default planar layout is most likely the easiest setting element to simply use, since the early accessible planes are essentially mirrors of the world. As it stands, I feel that merging the default setting with what we decide to be our setting may well be a real possibility.

 

[Rystil Arden]

My impression so far is that the default setting is far less described than some people believe. It seems to be mostly name-dropping, such as the ancient tiefling and dragonborn empires, around which we'd have to build an actual setting anyway. There should be no such problems with the default pantheon, but that is from what I heard built around adventurer life, not setting necessities, so it'll have gaps as well. The default planar layout is most likely the easiest setting element to simply use, since the early accessible planes are essentially mirrors of the world. As it stands, I feel that merging the default setting with what we decide to be our setting may well be a real possibility.

You may be right. However, what little I've seen of the default setting has seemed to me to be moving in an incredibly 'blah' direction. Then again, the planes will be very easy to handle without adopting the default if we go in a Greek direction, since the Greeks had it pretty well-documented as well.

The Dragonborn, which we hadn't mentioned before because we didn't know they existed, are incredibly easy to add, though if they put in too much "Bahamut!" flavour it will need to be edited. Simply make them some lesser version or descendant of the Gigantes (which were specifically described as serpent/dragonlike humanoids. Heck, the Gigantes girls even had boobs, so it fits with that issue as well).

If we use Titan or Protogenoi-born / Gigantes for Tiefling / Dragonborn, then we don't need a hazy 'ancient empire' of either of them to engineer the same cosmic conflict of the two.

Anyways, whatever way people want to go is okay with me and I wish the project well. I do have to say that if we do it the way Creamsteak describes it, I don't think I would have any desire to be involved as either an organiser or a player.

 

[ajanders]

I would suggest quite seriously that none of us know enough to have an intelligent discussion about 4E yet.
We know very little about the rules or the implied setting: we do know the rules are likely to provide strong hooks for many things in a setting we might rather like.
It is a capital mistake to theorize without sufficient data, as a wise man said.

 

[Wik]

You know, I've been thinking about 4e for a while, now. And I'm really not as excited about it as I once was.

Anyways, here's my general take on L4W, as it stands now. I apologize for the lack of organization... It's 3 am, and I'm rambling. Anyways, here goes:

1) We pretty much okay the entire three starting books, much like how we have LEB set up now. If, in the course of play, it is discovered that everyone hates power X, we can get judges to axe power X.

2) CS: While you could say that D&D is going to be easier to run with the default gods, I think it's probably silly to assume that you can't make your own, or that it will be difficult in any way. I see no problem with starting up a basic world.

3) We should start small, of course, and build out from there. I really pushed for the "greek model", because the combination of islands and continents made for great exploration potential, and individual GMs could add their own islands. I still think the model is a great way to explain the campaign cartography - there's a lot of room for exploration.

4) I do think we should adopt "points of light", and make sure that there are no empires or the like. No nations, and small kingdoms - we want city-states, mostly, that individual GMs can add as the game progresses. Remember, one of the stated goals in a 4e preview book was to move away from a human-centred game, so we can expect to see halfling barge cities and elven warrior nations.

5) While I am a huge supporter of the "greek model" in terms of mapmaking, I don't think we should become totally Greek. Really, adopting ANY cultural model as a basis may be jumping the gun. I really think we should try to take a wider range, and have individual city states ranging from renaiisance Venice to ancient Sparta, to Moslem Cairo to 1800s London, all wrapped up in a fantasy theme.

6) Of course, that's a bit much. What we SHOULD do is detail perhaps five major islands, and sprinkle the surrounding area with hundreds of smaller, ruin-filled islands for PCs to explore. Invent a backstory to explain for ancient empires. And go from there.

7) I REALLY want to see "World Judges" - basically, a judge or three who maintain an online Wiki (with MAPS!) and try to keep the world consistent. They would allow individual GMs to add to the world, without one GM placing a continent where it shouldn't be, that gets in everyone else's way.

8) Personally, I like the judging format of LEW. While we shouldn't add Judge XP/credits starting off, once we get the rules downpat, we should add them in.

9) I like the idea of starting players off with only 1 PC, starting at level one. Then, as we progress, we more or less state that you can only have one level 1 PC at a time, but raise the limit to, say, five. This way, those who really wanna play, can do so, but we'll be less likely to be flooded.

10) I like CS's earlier statement, about how each player should have a thread in a sub-forum detailing idndividual PCs. But, I think LEW probably has it easier. THAT BEING SAID, I think L4W should have standardized advancement tables and rules, so that individual players are keeping track of info the same way. That'd make things easier for me, at least.

11) Regarding adding new info: Player-created info should be voted on and added - I love the idea, and I stand by it. We should also be able to vote in wotc material (again, much like LEB)... but be very selective about how it is done. A manifesto of sorts should be adhered to, saying what should and shouldn't be allowed in the game.

12) I like CS's idea of players voting on campaign info, but instead, I think it should be for major game expansions only. "Should we add this new God?", not "Should we Add Rule X?" Anything that ups the power curve will wind up being voted in if we follow the latter... but the former will make things more enjoyable for the player base.

13) A minor meta-plot, perhaps organized by world judges, should be allowed. No mega-adventures, as they stand now, but perhaps minor hooks that could better inter-relate adventures and make them more "alive".


***

 

[Wik]

Alright. I've been skimming the thread, and I've picked up on the ideas that came before, and what I like and dislike.

1) Smaller Campaign Area - the smaller the campaign area, the more individual PCs can affect it, which I think is a great thing for a living campaign. Makes it more, I dunno, "living". I'm thinking a few major cities, and a lot of unexplored land.

2) Exploration - the campaign should mostly be unexplored, so the PCs can do the exploring (and so GMs can add stuff on the fly).

3) Post-Apocalyptic - I think Bront mentioned this. Really, a post-apocalyptic setting would work great with 4e's "Points of Light", and it could help explain why much of the world is unexplored... and why there are so many dungeons for PCs to explore. A magical apocalypse would work wonders, too, for the backstory and weird creatures that PCs inevitably encounter.

4) Fourth Era - A little idea of mine. We should set the setting in the "fourth era".

5) Wiki/PDF - Not only should we have a campaign wiki, but a campaign PDF that can be downloaded (free, of course) by those who need a crash course in the game. The PDF would be around 20 or so pages, contain explanations on all the campaign-relevant stuff, a map, and some info on playing the game. Hopefully, we'd update it yearly or something.

6) Players can only have one 1st level PC at a time, but there should be no limit on the number they can have. As an option, we could say that 3 or something is the maximum number of PCs (again, allowing only one 1st level at a time), but players can "buy" extra first level PC chances by spending DM credits. This would encourage frequent players to run their own games.

7) Words of wisdom from Knight Otu: While it is pretty early to worry about the Core Rule II+ books, my suggestion is to apply a similar ruling as we recently passed for LEW/LEB - Only the original SRD (which is supposed to be released pretty close to launch) content, namely PHB I, DMG I, and MM I, are available by default. SRD content from books thereafter (which seems likely given the quotes on Psionics being in a PHB and Psionics entering the SRD) needs to be approved separately (hopefully the SRD content won't be intermeshed to be inseperable). I would go a step further and recommend that races playable out of the MM need to be approved separately. While gnomes will presumably be playable out of the MM, there may also be others, such as warforged.
The Core Rule II+ books are also part of why I think that an exploration aspect is so important. Even if not all new stuff gets approved, some will, and it helps if we have undeveloped areas where we can say, "Yes, psionics is pretty strong there", for example.

8) I like a relatively small pantheon of deities, less than ten, and only one of which is evil (I really don't think most worlds need more than one evil god - it's really just an enemy to fight against, in most cases). As an option, we go with even fewer gods, but introduce many cults and covens that gain access to spells, allowing individual GMs to create mini-religions to throw at PCs.

9) A poll is a good idea. We should ask players what they want, really - what should the map look like, how many gods, etc?

 

[Phoenix8008]

Anyways, here's my general take on L4W, as it stands now.

1) We pretty much okay the entire three starting books, much like how we have LEB set up now. If, in the course of play, it is discovered that everyone hates power X, we can get judges to axe power X.

Good.

2) CS: While you could say that D&D is going to be easier to run with the default gods, I think it's probably silly to assume that you can't make your own, or that it will be difficult in any way. I see no problem with starting up a basic world.

I agree that it couldn't be that hard to use an alternate pantheon. Agreeing on one between everyone will be the only thing that makes it take awhile.

3) We should start small, of course, and build out from there. I really pushed for the "greek model", because the combination of islands and continents made for great exploration potential, and individual GMs could add their own islands. I still think the model is a great way to explain the campaign cartography - there's a lot of room for exploration.

A mainland with some fairly nearby islands sounds okay. Good for exploration and having easy access to water based travel/adventures. Also good if we have somewhere on the ocean that transits or overlaps with the Astral Sea for access to those kinds of adventures. Kind of a Bermuda Triangle where things dissapear and stranger things emerge from.

4) I do think we should adopt "points of light", and make sure that there are no empires or the like. No nations, and small kingdoms - we want city-states, mostly, that individual GMs can add as the game progresses. Remember, one of the stated goals in a 4e preview book was to move away from a human-centred game, so we can expect to see halfling barge cities and elven warrior nations.

Samller civilizations to start sounds okay. Huge empires all in the past leaving their ruins around for adventurers to explore.

5) While I am a huge supporter of the "greek model" in terms of mapmaking, I don't think we should become totally Greek. Really, adopting ANY cultural model as a basis may be jumping the gun. I really think we should try to take a wider range, and have individual city states ranging from renaiisance Venice to ancient Sparta, to Moslem Cairo to 1800s London, all wrapped up in a fantasy theme.

Agreed. Keep any cultural models in small areas to themselves. Individual cities of various cultures.

6) Of course, that's a bit much. What we SHOULD do is detail perhaps five major islands, and sprinkle the surrounding area with hundreds of smaller, ruin-filled islands for PCs to explore. Invent a backstory to explain for ancient empires. And go from there.

Don't forget to have a good sized chunk of nearby mainland to detail some as well. Just islands would be a little too Waterworld for me.

7) I REALLY want to see "World Judges" - basically, a judge or three who maintain an online Wiki (with MAPS!) and try to keep the world consistent. They would allow individual GMs to add to the world, without one GM placing a continent where it shouldn't be, that gets in everyone else's way.

Sounds good if we can find volunteers for it.

8) Personally, I like the judging format of LEW. While we shouldn't add Judge XP/credits starting off, once we get the rules downpat, we should add them in.

I think the current judge format is okay. Not sure about Judge/XP credits though.

9) I like the idea of starting players off with only 1 PC, starting at level one. Then, as we progress, we more or less state that you can only have one level 1 PC at a time, but raise the limit to, say, five. This way, those who really wanna play, can do so, but we'll be less likely to be flooded.

See below. Agree to only one 1st level PC at a time.

10) I like CS's earlier statement, about how each player should have a thread in a sub-forum detailing idndividual PCs. But, I think LEW probably has it easier. THAT BEING SAID, I think L4W should have standardized advancement tables and rules, so that individual players are keeping track of info the same way. That'd make things easier for me, at least.

So, like it is currently for LEW? We have a thread with the standards and expected character sheet format and everyone posts their own character as they are made? Or are you agreeing that there should be a sub forum with each player having their own thread containing all their characters (and DM adventure tracking perhaps)?

11) Regarding adding new info: Player-created info should be voted on and added - I love the idea, and I stand by it. We should also be able to vote in wotc material (again, much like LEB)... but be very selective about how it is done. A manifesto of sorts should be adhered to, saying what should and shouldn't be allowed in the game.

OK.

12) I like CS's idea of players voting on campaign info, but instead, I think it should be for major game expansions only. "Should we add this new God?", not "Should we Add Rule X?" Anything that ups the power curve will wind up being voted in if we follow the latter... but the former will make things more enjoyable for the player base.

Agreed.

13) A minor meta-plot, perhaps organized by world judges, should be allowed. No mega-adventures, as they stand now, but perhaps minor hooks that could better inter-relate adventures and make them more "alive".

Sure, sounds okay I guess.

Alright. I've been skimming the thread, and I've picked up on the ideas that came before, and what I like and dislike.

1) Smaller Campaign Area - the smaller the campaign area, the more individual PCs can affect it, which I think is a great thing for a living campaign. Makes it more, I dunno, "living". I'm thinking a few major cities, and a lot of unexplored land.

Sounds about right. Maybe some rumors of other cities that haven't been contacted in awhile?

2) Exploration - the campaign should mostly be unexplored, so the PCs can do the exploring (and so GMs can add stuff on the fly).

Same as #1 just above.

3) Post-Apocalyptic - I think Bront mentioned this. Really, a post-apocalyptic setting would work great with 4e's "Points of Light", and it could help explain why much of the world is unexplored... and why there are so many dungeons for PCs to explore. A magical apocalypse would work wonders, too, for the backstory and weird creatures that PCs inevitably encounter.

Fantasy post apocalyptic does fit in well with the 'points of light' and lack of major civilization. Sounds fine by me.

4) Fourth Era - A little idea of mine. We should set the setting in the "fourth era".

Fourth Era would be cool. A little nod to the new edition.

5) Wiki/PDF - Not only should we have a campaign wiki, but a campaign PDF that can be downloaded (free, of course) by those who need a crash course in the game. The PDF would be around 20 or so pages, contain explanations on all the campaign-relevant stuff, a map, and some info on playing the game. Hopefully, we'd update it yearly or something.

That would be great. Again assuming that we can find someone to do the work.

6) Players can only have one 1st level PC at a time, but there should be no limit on the number they can have. As an option, we could say that 3 or something is the maximum number of PCs (again, allowing only one 1st level at a time), but players can "buy" extra first level PC chances by spending DM credits. This would encourage frequent players to run their own games.

As above, only one 1st level PC at a time is fine. Great idea to have a cap of 3 characters normally with additional slots able to be purchased with DM credits. Great reward for those that put in the effort of DMIng and growing the world. They should get a chance to enjoy it more it they wish.

7) Words of wisdom from Knight Otu: While it is pretty early to worry about the Core Rule II+ books, my suggestion is to apply a similar ruling as we recently passed for LEW/LEB - Only the original SRD (which is supposed to be released pretty close to launch) content, namely PHB I, DMG I, and MM I, are available by default. SRD content from books thereafter (which seems likely given the quotes on Psionics being in a PHB and Psionics entering the SRD) needs to be approved separately (hopefully the SRD content won't be intermeshed to be inseperable). I would go a step further and recommend that races playable out of the MM need to be approved separately. While gnomes will presumably be playable out of the MM, there may also be others, such as warforged.
The Core Rule II+ books are also part of why I think that an exploration aspect is so important. Even if not all new stuff gets approved, some will, and it helps if we have undeveloped areas where we can say, "Yes, psionics is pretty strong there", for example.

Sounds good to me.

8) I like a relatively small pantheon of deities, less than ten, and only one of which is evil (I really don't think most worlds need more than one evil god - it's really just an enemy to fight against, in most cases). As an option, we go with even fewer gods, but introduce many cults and covens that gain access to spells, allowing individual GMs to create mini-religions to throw at PCs.

A fairly small pantheon sounds okay. A dozen or so maybe. I don't see a problem with multiple evil gods. Always fun to have two evils working at cross purposes and interfering with each other. Watch out if they make a truce and start working together though. Also tough to keep the numbers small unless you don't do racial dieties. Maybe just have the big portfolios and each race happens to visualize that god/goddes as their own race. So all the gods would be pan-racial being of whatever race the particular worshiper is.

9) A poll is a good idea. We should ask players what they want, really - what should the map look like, how many gods, etc?

Polls like this would give us a fairly quick means of gathering up info on some broad topics to start with.

 

[Knight Otu]

I'm coming around to use the core deities rather than homebrewed gods a bit. Word (and appearance) is that divine characters use feats as the means to differentiate between patron gods, and it seems that each god gets (at least?) one feat to broaden the Channel Divinity power. While it shouldn't be hard to remap the feats to our gods, we can't be sure that all deities can be covered this way, and if there is more than one feat, that all feats of one deity can be mapped to a single other god.

I mentioned previously that MM races shouldn't be playable right away and should need to be approved separately. That list is apparently:

• Bugbear
• Doppelganger/Changeling
• Drow
• Githyanki
• Githzerai
• Gnoll
• Gnome
• Goblin
• Hobgoblin
• Kobold
• Minotaur
• Orc
• Shadar-Kai
• Shifter (2 types, apparently longstride and razorclaw)
• Warforged

 

[Jerrand Redband]

Alright. I've been skimming the thread, and I've picked up on the ideas that came before, and what I like and dislike.

1) Smaller Campaign Area - the smaller the campaign area, the more individual PCs can affect it, which I think is a great thing for a living campaign. Makes it more, I dunno, "living". I'm thinking a few major cities, and a lot of unexplored land.

2) Exploration - the campaign should mostly be unexplored, so the PCs can do the exploring (and so GMs can add stuff on the fly).


6) Players can only have one 1st level PC at a time, but there should be no limit on the number they can have. As an option, we could say that 3 or something is the maximum number of PCs (again, allowing only one 1st level at a time), but players can "buy" extra first level PC chances by spending DM credits. This would encourage frequent players to run their own .

Hey only have read a little of this long thread but i was thinking maybe a newly discovered contient is in order for LEW. Maybe somebody already suggested this (haven't read everything) But characters who go to this contitent are 4.0 and you play 4.0 in the new world will use alot of good points from Wik (above ) give everyone a chance to contriubute and if someone wants to convert one of his LEW charatcers to 4.0 that all on him. You have same background and deities DM need only convert the ones there players are using or there NPCs follow. Leaving only a new map mostly coastline with interior unexpolered. Could also be a good way to introduce new races as they live only on the new contient. Later.

 

[Knight Otu]

I don't think that's a good idea. If LEW is to go 4E, it needs to go 4E in its entirety, and the exploration aspect can be built into a new world without having to worry about what happens if a katara bard/fighter/sorcerer wants to cross over to the new continent. If a player wants to reimagine their character into 4E, they're welcome, though.

 

[Jerrand Redband]

That's what I was saying let them do all the conversions themsleves but if a new lew 4.0 does start won't all the PCs be first lvl??