Discussion - LEW 4th Edition

[Manzanita]

Frex, after I collected all outstanding pieces of information in all of LEW about Medibaria, I then increased that information one-hundred-fold with my own details. So far, I haven't seen any GM use it, though.

That's b/c you won't write a summary of it, RA!

Anyway, as much as I love LEW, it is a bit of a hodge-podge, insufficiently documented, poorly mapped, with no official history, chronology, or dates.

This world has the potential to be much better & I see lots I like here. I do hope that if you (whoever 'you' are) run some polls, please put a link to them to the LEW general discussion thread. I strongly suspect I'm not the only one who would want to be a part of L4W, but doesn't frequently check the 'Talking the Talk' forum.

 

[Wik]

1. We have no idea who is running it. I think the general idea is that we'll have five judges who set it up. Those judges will be "Voted in", and the votes will be put up in LEW some time around february. I really think these judges will campaign on a "platform" of sorts. My "Platform", for example, would be World Judges, Relatively Small (but detailed) play area, and Meta-Plots.

2. Basic world ideas should also be put up for Vote - world shape, deities, and whether or not this "greek" thing that's gonna be SUPERCOOLAWESOME will actually float.

3. Everyone that's arguing and whatnot here is just doing it because, well, we're worldbuilders at heart. Nothing is at all even close to "official".

***

One thing I was thinking about in the shower a few hours ago - we should be rewarding DM credits right from the start, but leave what a credit is actually WORTH blank until we have an idea how XP scales in 4e. 1 Credit = 100 XP (or whatever it is) in 4e probably won't mean the same thing as in 3e. But I think GMs should be getting credits from the start (ESPECIALLY at the start, really, since I imagine we're going to have a lot of people signing up all at once!)

 

[Manzanita]

For what its worth, I hope Creamstake will 'run' for judge as well. I liked his idea about starting the world in the established town detailed in the new DMG & allowing DMs to expand the world as adventures are created.

 

[Wik]

I'm personally totally against that idea. I'm all for starting small, but with the big picture in mind. I think if we followed CS's technique, L4W would get pretty sloppy, fast. Though, I hope he becomes a judge for the building phase, too. I think he's got some great ideas (particularly in the meta sphere of things) that we could really use in L4W.

 

[Creamsteak]

I do tend to spend more time thinking about the rules for the rules than the actual rules.

 

[Wik]

And that's why we keep you around, CS.

 

[Manzanita]

Thinking about the DM credits thing, maybe we should call them 'tokens' or 'player gold' or something, since I think they should be available for things other than DMing.

I think each adventure should be required to have a 'scribe', just as it has a designated judge. The scribe (who could well be the DM), would be responsible for accumulating world info as the adventure progresses. Doing this proactively would be easier than going back and putting it together at the end. At the end of the adventure, the scribe would be responsible for posting that info (geographical info, NPCs, plot summary, etc) on the Wiki & whereever else, and would be rewarded with a player gold piece (& maybe some player silver & coppers if it's good work)

 

[Rystil Arden]

I'm personally totally against that idea. I'm all for starting small, but with the big picture in mind. I think if we followed CS's technique, L4W would get pretty sloppy, fast. Though, I hope he becomes a judge for the building phase, too. I think he's got some great ideas (particularly in the meta sphere of things) that we could really use in L4W.

I am 100% behind the above statement.

 

[Wik]

Thinking about the DM credits thing, maybe we should call them 'tokens' or 'player gold' or something, since I think they should be available for things other than DMing.

I think each adventure should be required to have a 'scribe', just as it has a designated judge. The scribe (who could well be the DM), would be responsible for accumulating world info as the adventure progresses. Doing this proactively would be easier than going back and putting it together at the end. At the end of the adventure, the scribe would be responsible for posting that info (geographical info, NPCs, plot summary, etc) on the Wiki & whereever else, and would be rewarded with a player gold piece (& maybe some player silver & coppers if it's good work)

Yeah, I like the "Scribe" idea, mainly since it would make my idea of "World Judges" a hundred times easier. Giving them what amounts to a GM credit works swimmingly with me, too.

One thing we could do is realy increase the number of tokens we give out, while at the same time decreasing their value. For example, if this were 3.5E, and we said "1 token = 10xp/character level), we could give out three, four tokens for tasks Players accomplish, while at the same time, we wouldn't be going overboard.

as for the traditional use of GM credits, we just increase the number of tokens we give out per month.

 

[Wik]

Just skimming the Download shop, and I found This by Sean K. Reynolds. Essentially, it's a free setting guide to Mythic Greece. It really has some neat ideas (particularly PCs descended from Gods... something I hadn't considered when we were talking about a Greek L4W world, but is totally an option once we get a firm grip on the rules!).

Anyways, it's FREE, so I think it's worth all of us checking out.