Do you wish new Campaigns to integrate with popular ones

[ngenius]

Dear Fellow Gamers,

First of all, let me address the poll option that states the GM should decide.
This option was included because even though the d20 system was supposed to harmonize role playing games, many new campaign settings stray from these core rules. Arcana Unearthed, on its own merit, is an excellent new campaign setting and Monte Cook has several new classes like the "Champion", which are much better than the d20 "Paladin", but integrating this with a d20 alignment-based system is not easy. Thus, I wanted to know if GMs of home-generated campaigns prefer rules to integrate with my new fantasy setting, or they prefer to find their own way.

I am leading a group of dedicated writers and designers in a project to create a very interesting campaign world designed to bring some new innovation to the gaming community.

As a form of friendly advice and assistance, the above poll is to help us decide in which direction to steer the project?

Most especially, your feedback concerning your interest with integration into some very popular expected releases, namely Eberron from Wizards of the Coast and Iron Kingdoms from Privateer Press.

There are many gamers who seem to hate alignments as seen from this message thread: http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=86969

It seems Monte Cook’s Arcana Unearthed did away with alignments and standard character classes to satisfy such an audience. We intend to have very flexible alignments to allow compatibility with alignment-governed game worlds and with freer game worlds too.

There may be other campaigns that are your favorites, please state so if you wish.

Please, when voting, do leave some comments as to why you chose a particular answer.

Thank you for your kindness and assistance.

(ps. we are constantly revising our project to make it better, bear with us)

 

[I'm A Banana]

Do what works for your world.

Be prepared to poach good ideas from others, but unless they fit the concept of your world, don't worry about 'em.

If your world is never morally certain, or likes to mix a lot of good & evil stereotypes, no alignments works perfectly.

If your world is Good vs. Evil, and you like the clarity, alignments are best.

It really depends on what kind of world you want, and it'll echo through the entire setting.

 

[Turanil]

I voted "The GM should decide what is best and integrate freely without forced rules". My opinion is that with all the current existing products, you cannot do the thing that will be the answer to all DMs wishes. Every player, every DM has his/her own idea on the type of setting he wants, and probably no two are the same. For instance, I don't like Eberron and Iron Kingdoms, so you already cannot sell this to me; on the other hand I much like AU classes, and aspects of Dragonlance, R&R Excalibur, and Medieval Player's Manual. Will your product include them??

I say that from my own experience when I tried to design a campaign that would please all of my only five players. At five players it's already difficult. However, note that since players easily adapt to a specific type of setting, it's finally not a big deal.

What I did with my own setting, is to just create a region of mountains that could be inserted in many campaign settings. The strong point with that, is that you can detail the place more toroughly, rather than give just generic info on whole continents. I would personnaly prefer something like that, that I could put next to my region of mountains setting.

 

[Greyson]

Some Crossover Is Nice

I like a small degree of crossover from setting to setting. With the d20 system, I think the capacity of crossover is a non-issue. The rules will always mesh - it will be the theme, atmosphere and flavor that will set a setting apart from others.

Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed was instantly popular with my World of Greyhawk gaming group. We managed to blend the two settings (Greyhawk with Diamond Throne) to create an interesting and satisfying D&D game.

Ultimately, DMs and players will sift through, sort out, and choose the elements of any product they have and apply what they like at their discretion. It is one of the things I love about d20. The ease by which you can do that. No matter what an author's intent is, the decision on what will be used and what will be discarded will be made at the gaming table. Unless, of course, you are playing in a Living Campaign - then the Circle decides, lol.

 

[Nifft]

Eh.

If it's good enough to stand on its own, it's good enough to steal from.

And vice versa.

-- N

 

[Starglim]

I'm not sure that I understand the poll options.

I'd say that I play in, at most, two or three settings at one time, I GM in only one, but I buy books for many different settings. I'm unlikely to buy books for your setting in order to play exclusively in that setting. Rather I will pick up a book in order to use, adapt, or just enjoy the expression of certain ideas.

By mere statistics, I'd advise writing rules in a modular way - subsystems that can be detached and used alone, and that all refer back to core d20 rules, except in the specific ways that they are different.

On the specific question that you raised, I would say that the behavioural system (whether you use alignment, something different, or no constraint at all) must relate to the central themes of your setting. If the moral realities if your setting aren't noticeably different from the nine alignments of the SRD, then your use of alignment should adhere to the standard assumptions.

I don't put too much stock in that other thread. There are some players who hate alignment, just as there are players who hate dice. Frankly, each group is less likely to buy any d20 product at all, regardless of what you put in it. The original poster is plainly wrong to claim that "most people" agree with him.

 

[Ron]

Your pool is quite confusing as it refers to two questions at once.

Concerning settings. I don't run adventures in other settings than my own. Still, from time to time, I like to read other settings to see what's going on. In general, I'm more found of independent settings. It is disgusting how the Realms were published with several independent settings meshed in. I like consistent settings.

Concerning alignments. I wouldn't care, and so should not the settings. Many groups I know disregard them entirely and still use published settings. For sake of better compatibility, included them in the NPCs stats and don't discuss them elsewhere. It is much more useful to describe the NPCs motivations with some deep.

 

[ngenius]

I'm not sure that I understand the poll options.

...By mere statistics, I'd advise writing rules in a modular way - subsystems that can be detached and used alone, and that all refer back to core d20 rules, except in the specific ways that they are different...

On the specific question that you raised, I would say that the behavioural system (whether you use alignment, something different, or no constraint at all) must relate to the central themes of your setting. If the moral realities if your setting aren't noticeably different from the nine alignments of the SRD, then your use of alignment should adhere to the standard assumptions.

First of all thank you to all those who answered this poll so early, especially, Kamikazee Midget, Turanil, Greyson, Nifft, Starglim and Ron.

I will try to address all your comments as best as I can.

Firstly let me start with Ron, I am sorry you initially did not understand the poll. Basically, what I wanted was to know whether gamers prefer some form of intergration of new campaigns with their existing and love ones.

I am happy to see such a variety in the responses you all posted. Thanks.

About alignments, actually we have two major alignments in my Campaign, which are needed for rewards being either positive (beneficial) or negative (harmful) to the recipient. Since, these alignments change with every encounter or adventure, players get to experience gaining both beneficial and harmful rewards based on their actions in each instance. But problems arise with d20-restricted classes like Paladins (the worst restrictions) to others like Bards, Barbarians, Druids, and Monks (mild restrictions). Luckily Wizards have no restriction problems. To compensate for this, I have slightly altered variants of the Ex-Classes such as Alt-X Paladins (that substitute evil spells for all good spells, much like Blackguard PrC) when there is a d20 alignment shift, instead of losing all abilities like in standard d20 ex-Paladins.

Accepting the fact, that many players and GMs love special settings best, we will try to find the best qualities of the most popular settings and attempt a good adaptation that will also not throw our own Campaign way off target.

Personally, just like Turanil agreed "The GM should decide what is best and integrate freely without forced rules" seems like a good option. But, experience has also shown me that sometimes when rules are not well codified, there are bound to be heated arguments, and then the GMs social and diplomatic skills become critical to a smooth campaign. For example, what happens in a Campaign world where there are not standard d20 gods, or we have clerics granted spells from rare non-d20 domains? Hence, I will attempt to state explicitly some solutions to these potential problems (not that non-d20 problems are beyond the scope of our Campaign project).

Once again, my thanks to all of you earlier risers, for your well-formed opinions; do try to tell your friends to also participate so we can have a very informative decision by the end of this poll.

 

[Gandalf007]

I agree with "The GM should decide what is best and integrate freely without forced rules". I prefer that new campaigns are unique and interesting.

 

[Bendris Noulg]

I want good flavor and decent rules to back it up. Whether it integrates with anything else isn't an issue; if I like it, I'll change what I need to in order to make it work, while if I don't like it, I won't use it regardless of integration.