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Living 4th Edition: Setting - Gods - Organizations - PCs


The 4th Edition Living EnWorld (abbreviated L4W) setting is open and active. The Transitive Isles will be the setting for the campaign.

Please see the Character Creation Guide for information about creating a character and joining us; the transitive isles setting page if you want to know more about the Isles and the forum for more information about everything else, or just to ask questions.


Contents

L4W: Introduction

4th Edition Living EnWorld (abbreviated L4W) is a living PbP World created and ran by the EnWorld community. If you are not familiar with the idea of a PbP Living World, check out the highly active Living ENWorld, Living Eberron, and Living Superheroes.


Key Differences between a Living World and a "regular" DnD game

  • While they may be playing in different games run by different DMs all of the player characters in a living world exist in one setting.
  • The setting is persistent. In principal an item a character finds in one adventure will carry on to the next, and so forth.
  • In addition to the two roles everyone is familiar with (Player and Dungeon Master) Living Games include judges whose job is to arbitrate the rules of the setting, approve characters, step in to take care of a game (and it's players) if a DM disappears and so forth.

Key Differences between Play by Post Living Worlds and WotC Living Worlds

  • Everyone is a volunteer (so be nice :) )
  • We don't do "modules"; generally speaking a DM runs one game, and only the characters in that game experience that adventure.
  • In some respects Living Enworld Games exist at a mid-point between "regular Play by Post" games (where each DM does their own thing) and WotC's Living Worlds (where there are dozens of characters doing the same adventure at the same time).

Vision Statement

  • Inclusive: We would like Living EnWorld to include as many participants as reasonably possible
  • The community will decide how the setting develops
  • Thorough polls for big issues
  • Individual creative efforts by players and DMs
  • Anyone can play
  • Everyone will be treated equally
  • Rules will be clear
  • Accessible: We would like to have the setting be accessible and communal (specifically by using Wikis)
  • Scalable: We would like the setting to be scalable (i.e. to grow over time without becoming too difficult (to play/run games/judge), ceases to make sense or be a fun world to play in)
  • Ease of Judging: Judging is a difficult job, and finding people who can be fair, effective judges is difficult. Some former and current judges have suggested that we work on creating clear rules and designing a setting that would be easier to judge.

Judges: Roles & responsibilities

From covaithe's brainstorm (with a few edits) In LEW, judges do the following:

  • Write, update and maintain (or oversee) the Wikis that help define the setting
  • Vote on new rules content, e.g. player-created prestige classes, feats, etc. The goal was to allow customization and flavor without either power creep or excessive rules bloat.
  • Read and approve adventure proposals. This provides some fairly limited control over worldbuilding, though in practice I suspect it's rarely used.
  • Each adventure must be watched by a judge who is neither a player nor the DM for that adventure.
  • Adjudicate rules disputes (rare)
  • Approve experience awards (common, but mostly rubber-stamp)
  • If an adventure's DM disappears, that adventure's judge fills in, either continuing the adventure or wrapping it up neatly so that the players aren't screwed.

Character Checkers

Also, character checkers, which is a separate but overlapping list of people, approve new characters and level-ups. Right now being a character checker is just an informal thing. If you help out other people get their character sheets into order then you're a character checker.

Desirable attributes for Judges

If that list is roughly accurate for L4W, then it seems that judges need to have at least most of the following characteristics:

  • Experience DMing, at least enough to be willing to jump in and rescue a game if the DM disappears.
  • Familiarity, if not expertise, with the rules. I imagine this can be pretty flexible at first; we're all still learning 4e.
  • Willing to volunteer some (possibly lots of) free time on a fairly regular basis
  • Reliable, i.e. not likely to disappear without warning
  • Regular email access outside of ENWorld
  • Knows something about the history and purpose of the community, and buys into the idea.

Judges: Judge Characters and Adventures

In the setting the player characters run by judges are just the same as any other PC. In order to ensure parity judges who appear in an adventure will only read the adventure summary section of the adventure and not the spoiler section.

Communal Decision Making (AKA Voting)

In pricipal L4W will be formed and its rules made using the principles of consensus. This is not supposed to be simple majority rules but finding something that everyone can live with which supports the spirit of the setting. We use several methods for getting to consensus, all of which are are not perfect.

Approval by Acclimation

Used for things that the judges think won't be controversial.

If four yeas are posted and no nays then the proposal is approved.

If objections are raised later it can be put to a vote.

"Voting"

Despite it's substantial problems voting is a necessary evil for quickly getting a consensus. The community has no wish to have 51%/49% votes where the 49% feel ignored and/or like their concerns or hopes haven't been address.

In principal the facilitators will try to write lots of choices and "forge consensus" by staring at the results and carefully teasing out some sort of solution that pleases the greatest number while not driving of the least number of people; in practice usually majority rules.

=Aside: Problems with voting

These are just a few of the problems.

  • There is actually a large body of research work that addresses the fact that voting is not actually going to reflect the true preferences of a population.
  • The choices are invariably not well worded, open to interpretation, often don't match an individuals actual preferences.
  • Polls themselves are often unclear and/or difficult to really understand; people frequently don't understand what is being discussed.

Proposal Voting

Has not been used yet. Will probably be used in the future. People talk it over until they're ready to vote, then just include a [COLOR=Green][SIZE=4]YES[/SIZE][/COLOR] or [COLOR=Red][SIZE=4]NO[/SIZE][/COLOR] in their post. That way, they can change their votes if further discussion changes their mind. The process continues until one of the pass or fail conditions is met, or people lose interest, if none of the end conditions is met.

Adventure Submission

Adventure Submission is still going to be fairly freeform for now. Adventures can be long or short, site or story based, open to a broad class of players or narrowly focused, serial or one-shot; really anything you can think of that you want to run.

There should be two sections: Summary and Detailed Overview.
After you submit your adventure it will be discussed, (you may get suggestions or requests to make changes) and you will (probably) be assigned a judge whose job it will be to "cover" you. We will probably adopt most of the system that other Living Campaigns use ({{#Detailed Overview Should Include (from LEB)|see below]])

Write up your submission and send it to l4w.judges@gmail.com. (You can just start off with a summary if you like.)

Summary

A paragraph or two including hooks (how characters get involved), length and the general purpose of the adventure. You should also mention if you're planning on adding any major new NPCs to or filling in the background of the home-base of the setting (i.e. Daunton or the Proximate Isles).

Detailed Overview

Also called "the spoiler section"; this includes details of the adventure. What you're including, the backstory, etc.

We're working on getting a better sample up. For now please consider the following which was shameless copied from LEB.--Graf 02:32, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Detailed Overview Should Include (from LEB)

A Dungeon Master of some kind is necessary for any adventure, even an extremely short vignette. In order to start an adventure, the DM must request that the current judges in charge of adventure approval approve the adventure. Any adventure needs to submit the following information in order to be approved:

1) Who are the players: This can be a specific list or this can be a description of what kinds of characters are likely to fall in line with this adventure.
2) What is the background: Describe the setting, the people, and the motives that make this adventure.
3) What is the story: What is the story of the adventure itself? Who are the bad guys? What are they doing? How is victory achieved or defeat met?
4) What is the challenge: Specifically, what are the likely challenges the group will face? What levels of characters are expected for this adventure? What are the encounter levels encounter levels and xp budgets of any combat that will be encountered? Will challenges be overcome through combat, stealth, skill, or diplomacy?
5) What are the rewards: What kinds of rewards are there to be found? Fame, money, magic, and experience should all be expressed here. Anything that can be a reward is important for the judges to see.
The judges may ask for detailed descriptions of the above, and it is important to establish whether this is a campaign, an adventure, or a short vignette. Experience in play by post may also be important (a new DM may be discouraged from trying to run a very long adventure more than a DM that has had success before). If there are any questions as to the DM’s reliability, they will be made by the judges (previously abandoning a game will limit the DM to doing a few Vignettes to warm up before taking on a new adventure, for instance).
If an adventure is approved, then the DM can begin recruiting if necessary. The Tower's Shard L4W tavern thread [link coming] is one place to go to find a party of adventurers, though other methods of recruiting are available as well. The DM can choose to disallow characters from joining, as they need to. It is their adventure, and they should have the right to decide who can play. After the adventuring party is formed, the DM needs to find a judge that is not playing to watch the adventure. You will usually be assigned a judge; but if not you need one before you start. This judge will help the DM where necessary, but most responsibility falls on the DM to run the adventure.

After the group is filled and the adventure thread starts, the DM will need to record all awards information as the thread progresses. After every point where experience or other rewards are awarded, the DM needs to email the judge that has offered to watch their game with this information. The judge will keep these notes on experience and treasure, and will use them to award the party at the end of the adventure (or if the adventure ends prematurely). This is done because it is very important that the judges have ready access to the DM’s notes in order to deal with a missing DM or other problem.

Also, while a game is running, the DM needs to keep a post with the interface information and a list of all characters playing in the game. This information should be kept in the Adventure Tracking Thread (or elsewhere we're still working it out). This is important, because it allows anyone curious to find the information on the basic parts of an adventure necessary to relate to it, and also gives Judges a list to go to for finding all the characters related to the adventure. Characters that abandon an adventure or leave mid way should be listed, but notation of their condition might need to be added if they are not to receive experience for the adventure past a certain point.

After the adventure is completed, the DM will give final awards for experience and treasures, and resolve how the PCs leave the adventure if it is site based. If there is an option for a continued adventure, it is important to plan for some players to be able to leave and for new members to join a group, because this is the nature of a living campaign setting.


Character Creation

See the Character Creation Guide. See also the wiki page on character creation.

Adventure Index

Main article: L4W:Adventure Index

This is an index of all the adventures run in L4W.

L4W World Records

Main article: L4W:World Records

This is a collection of records for the greatest achievements that have been accomplished in L4W games. All members should feel free to update as new records exceed old ones.

Meta, Background and Additional Reference

How we got here and what we think we're doing

The discussion about L4W started in the summer of 2007 on this thread. As you can imagine for a thread that has been out there a year it is quite long; many different people looking at the issue at many different points of time have all contributed.


L4W Roadmap

see the roadmap thread

Proposed Settings

Two settings were proposed

Ultimately the Transitive Isles was further advanced and was accepted by popular vote.

Polls

so many, see the forum and look for the poll graphic

4th Edition Living ENWorld: Original Poll unused questions

See L4W:Old_Main

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