Monday, August 18th, 2:46 AM (central),
I was trying to sleep, but my muse hit. At Gencon I was privy to what the RPGA calls Living Greyhawk. Living Greyhawk is only 'somewhat' alive. Character interaction isn't very deep, and a lot of the things that make a campaign setting alive are non-existent. For instance, characters are not normally permitted to create their own magic items. Characters cannot develop their own spells without the approval of a bunch of groups of people called Triads, and to my knowledge it's never been done.
I want a living game. I want to be able to create a character that is an interactive part of not just my gaming tables campaign. I want to be able to create an item for someone who took the time to find me, just to make his item. I want a Living Campaign setting.
Does this idea catch your attention? Then read on... I've got a little more to say...
The world will be named Enworld. Enworld will be made up of a number of homebrew people, locations, and events constructed by those people who are willing. A group of people will act as judges, overseeing all of the characters, events, and locations as they are spawned, destroyed, and changed by the passing of time. Judges will also get to arbitrate global events and the passing of time on the setting. There will be a number of games ran inside the setting by willing DMs with willing players. Every game will operate independently, some being for just 1 player while others occupy groups of more. The characters, in turn, will be able to interact with each other on a regular basis.
The way I'm seeing this playing out...
The first game in the Out of Character forum will be a character glossery. Any number of 1st level characters made using the guidelines provided will be stored here. This, I guess, isn't too different from YB in that respect. Characters will be viewable to all of the players, dms, and judges that are are around. It will also, most likely, become a rule of thumb that players need to attach (in smallest text) a link to their individual characters in their sigs. This is so a DM can quickly access your post in a thread without any problems.
The first game In Character thread for this game will probably be a Tavern. A Tavern is a safe place where characters can interact, and form groups. There may end up being a number of these in different parts of the campaign setting. The first tavern will be the only one, until a player reaches another location and creates a tavern of his own, which will probably have a level minimum like 6. There will obviously be a limit on the total number of these, but it shouldn't be a problem if it takes some time to reach that point. One player may found the, "Red Dragon's Inn" in the city of "Made up Name" on the coast of the "Place where some adventure is to be had".
The second out of character thread would be for the first DMs to work on an interactive adventure. Something simple, with two groups that are operating seperately, but get to meet up at different points in the game. They would discuss here just like you would in any other OOC thread for a game, except that players would probably be discouraged from reading certain parts. Actual module writing might need to be handled elsewhere, or even through email, if it gets to that.
The second in character thread would be the FIRST ADVENTURE! The place where it all starts. Like any other PbP.
After an adventure, characters that survive would be able to spend their money and buy their items for their next adventure. Interact with characters, provide some help for lower level characters, and maybe even start building in the world (construct a settlement, tavern, blacksmith, etc.) Of course, players with multiple characters would have to be restricted from 'feeding' their own lower level characters, but I expect the people around this forum to be honest.
So, what do you think? Think it would work? Want to do it?
