Wik said:
See, I dunno about that. If we were to start work on designing a world in May, I don't think we'd be ready to actually *run* things until, say, July or August.
That could be fun and all, but I'd personally like to be playing in the summer, when I actually have the most time to devote to posting.
Besides, I like building a world, and we don't truly need to know the rules to make the world - so long as we know the basics.
Yes, but a few comments.
1) you won't have enough people ready and familiar with 4E till a few months after it's released (not everyone will get it immediately, and it takes some time to get the hang of a new rules set)
2) How the races and classes function is being changed on some level, as well as some races are being removed initialy but could be added (and in the SRD no less) later. If Gnomes for example aren't in initialy, and 3 months later pop into the SRD, that could be a problem.
3) Important things like how deities work will require some basis in the rules as well.
I'm all for world building (I was working on my own till things petered out, mostly due to a lack of interest on other people's part, and writers block on my part), but I think knowing some of the default rules and setting asumptions will help in creating the next LEW.
Gnomes and Halflings changed between 2nd, 3.0, and 3.5, enough to where some assumptions that might have been made about them would have proven invalid. And classes we never thought of may exist (Warlock could be core, Warlord is mentioned as a class, at least 1 class is biting it, potentialy Monks or Bards?).
Plus, since it won't be LEW 3.5, discussing it in the middle of the LEW discussion thread isn't probably the best place.
I'd at least wait till just before the PHB comes out, ride the wave of interest, and work on it then. I'm interested in world building (I've had some fun god ideas, and had a lot of LEW input in rules and content creation so far, and I came late to the game here), but I just don't think now is the time.
