(Discussion) General Part I

[GnomeWorks]

My character has been posted.

CS - I did find that the 3.5 ranger could be manipulated to fit the 'feel' of my character, though that isn't what he was really intended for. I admit, though, that some of the ranger abilities play nicely into his future path.

 

[Creamsteak]

So if I were to, say, gather a group from the inn and suggest we charter a ship to seek out the Blue-Banded Pirates in the Islands of Adefar to recover the plunder from Port Sirkuhan, I could do that under two conditions: 1) there was a GM willing to take us through that, and 2) I write up a bunch of material about the Blue-Banded Pirates, the Islands of Adefar, Port Sirkuhan as well as its recent plundering, which provides enough background to make this reasonably possible without totally ASSASSINATING the Judge/GM's free time, and then post it to the main thread and get it approved.

Maybe. It would probably be more like, Get a DM first, DM gets a majority of judges approval for the adventure and your work. Then your work goes down as canon, and the adventure begins. The DM will also need to get at least 1 judge to agree to keep up to date on the thread. At the end of the adventure, the DM and observing judge report to the majority of judges, who will then add your adventure to the thread of completed adventures. Complex as hell, no?

I need to write this stuff down... but not now, or else I'll need asprin.

 

[GnomeWorks]

Maybe. It would probably be more like, Get a DM first, DM gets a majority of judges approval for the adventure and your work. Then your work goes down as canon, and the adventure begins. The DM will also need to get at least 1 judge to agree to keep up to date on the thread. At the end of the adventure, the DM and observing judge report to the majority of judges, who will then add your adventure to the thread of completed adventures. Complex as hell, no?

Hmm... I imagine, though, that some adventures wouldn't necessarily be like that.

Let's say that I am Zappo the Mage, and I need a certain spell component for a powerful spell I'm researching. So I put out a message saying that able-bodied young people who can find something should go visit me. Then I, as Zappo, tell them that they need to find this component.

At about this point, a DM would step in, and take over for results of actions and what-not, as the adventure has technically begun. See where I'm going with that? It would be like in YB, where two people get together and exchange insults, then wait for a Judge... only its a little more complex here.

I need to write this stuff down... but not now, or else I'll need asprin.

Um... you just did. On the boards.

 

[Creamsteak]

Um... you just did. On the boards.

What he said. Now I need asprin.

 

[Uriel]

Maybe. It would probably be more like, Get a DM first, DM gets a majority of judges approval for the adventure and your work. Then your work goes down as canon, and the adventure begins. The DM will also need to get at least 1 judge to agree to keep up to date on the thread. At the end of the adventure, the DM and observing judge report to the majority of judges, who will then add your adventure to the thread of completed adventures. Complex as hell, no?

I need to write this stuff down... but not now, or else I'll need asprin.

It would also be important to keep whatever Cartographers abreast of the situation, perhaps a bit before someone launches a new area/setting, so that the poor buggers can keep up.

It's probably a bit early to launch my City idea, so I'll stay quiet for now.

 

[Creamsteak]

Alright, I have a headache, so I need some help. I need to pull my thoughts and posts over this thread into something coherent. I think you would call it a plan of action... or just a plan. If I've missed anything, please tell me so that I can figure it into my schematics.



Tomorrow, or even tonight, I'm going to introduce the Red Dragon Inn. This location will be on it's own for now. It will act as the central, and probably largest, meeting point for the [Living Enworld] characters. Players with characters will be permitted to develop their own personal attitudes with each other, and work themselves off into whatever groups they want. They can form friendships and enemies as soon as they like.

Just don't start writing up material about the setting just yet. I can't handle it now. Not until I have more of the framework set up.

During the time when this player to player interaction is going on, they can order whatever drinks they want, etc, for free right now. Taverns will charge higher level characters some money to enter, I think, just to make things interesting.

I probably won't have time to write an adventure this week. I have one prepared, but it's for a home-game not a play by post. I'm going to create a thread in this forum for DM registration. Basically, if your going to DM a game, you will need to post in that thread. After the first few adventures have passed, DMs will recieve a DM rating of some kind to encourage those that put the best efforts into the game. Also, the ruling body of judges will be there to handle any problems.

One of the registered DMs, or myself, will then tell me and the other judges (there will be a judges thread somewhere... I might hide it in meta to save space) about his adventure. The judges will then give their approval, most likely, to assemble the proper group for the adventure, if it hasn't already been assembled. This may happen three or four times before the next big step.

Now we will have 2 or more threads in the In Character forum, and 1 Rogues Gallery, 1 thead of DMs, and 1 Judge/Discussion thread.

It really may need it's own forum... every game adds 1 additional thread, and possibly the need for more OOC comments.

 

[Uriel]

CS, what do you think of allowing the 3.5 Core (MM) variants, wood/grey elves, dwarves etc...

It could allow for a more myriad character base, as I bet we will start seeing a lot of very similar characters as it stands (PH only).

I started a character to see that someone else had pretty much the same thing, AND there were at least 2 Gnomes already, so my Gnome addiction is out(Woohoo for the Gnomes!).

I was tooling around with the several elves sub-types at political odds in a setting 'idea', so I thought I'd ask.
Races that had no ECL requirements, of course.

As well, I had been toying with the idea of latent Templates for characters, Genasi,1/2 Fiend, 1/2Celestial etc...it could make for cool development if 'things' started manifesting as a character grew (allowing one to start as a Human, for example, then perhaps later gain the Genasi abilities instead of a level, some latent heritage surfacing.

Your thoughts?

-Uriel

 

[Graf]

Another idea?

(I've never participated in this sort of thing before, so sorry if I'm baffled about some of this).

This sounds a tremendous amount like an idea I've been batting around with a few friends I play with in RL. Which makes me pretty excited about playing.

Not be presumptuous but there are one or two things you might want to touch on:
Genre: Even its just supposed to be D&D you should probably specify what kind of gameworld, you're playing in.
A high magic pseudo-medieval greyhawk/fr type setting?

You might want to think about setting the world up in such a manner as to allow DMs styles run different styles of game without a lot of difficulty. So a character might play in a game in a burning desert one month and then reasonably be in a Mediterranean city the next. A number of Gates, portals or something like that connecting places which are removed from each other physically might be a good way to facilitate that.In other words it might be a good idea to have a mechanism of moving around the world, or around several different planes (which might comprise the "world"). You could have lots of planes, or just a few different cities linked together on the same world.
Also if people feel like they can create more freely (even if it's just a demiplane somewhere) you will probably get more participation on the DM end.

For example: The 'core' world is made up of three cities, all built on the ruins of ancient cities created by the same lost culture. One is a dwarven kingdom deep beneath the earth. The other is a prosperous multicultural trade city located on the edge of a verdant forest. The last is actually more of an outpost, located in an extinct volcano in a lush jungle (sorry, Dungeon mag reference). The underground game might have pinned in and ridged environment, there is a constant need for adventurers, quality weapons and armor are plentiful, but other resources are scarce. The multi-cultural city might be the original home of this lost civilization, with ruins continuing deep into the earth (similar to Plotus in some ways). The ruined jungle city might only have been recently colonized, and has a more wild west rough-and-tumble kind of feel, with a vast unexplored area continent to be discovered (and populated by sub-DMs).

I would also lean toward the "core 3.5 only" stuff. I love psionics but it's a lot to add in that most players aren't familiar with. There is a lot of having to adjust powers: Does spider climb become 2nd level? Animal Affinity now mirrors 3.5 attribute enhancing spells (as someone mentioned)?
And then there's psionic combat: Most people use Mindscapes or have changed psionic combat...

(edit: spellchecked)

 

[Creamsteak]

I lost my last two posts when the boards went down for a bit. I'll re-type them up I guess... but maybe not right now.

Heres a picture I took using my screen capture for the possible appearance of the first tavern...

 

[garyh]

and the game should run itself fairly well when I'm too busy. That's the point of having a solid chain of command... someone to fill my place. Gary, I'm looking at you .

Hey, no problem, Creamsteak! I'm totally in on helping run this project. Like I said, I'm up for being a Judge, and if you'd like to me to be your second in command, I'd be honored.

(Oh, and I also wanna run a PC, if we decide it's kosher for Judges to have their own character. I'm patient, though - we have enough to deal with just addressing the basics right now!)