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Gauging interest in a homebrew "new world" campaign

Zurai

First Post
First things first: This is not a recruitment post. I don't want to see any character concepts yet. This post is solely to see if there's enough interest in the type of campaign I want to run. If there is, I'll make a seperate recruiting post with more details of the world and character generation.

Alright, with that out of the way... I'm working on the homebrew campaign world I'm going to use for my local group when 4th Edition hits, and it occured to me that it might be a good idea to involve other minds than my own in the history of the world. So, what do I do? I come here, and see if anyone wants to play a game! :D

The world will be very much "points of light" oriented. Players will start out in a moderately large town (maybe 500-1000 people) surrounded by a ring of outlying farms... and a whole lot of wilderness. There are no maps of the lands past maybe three days' ride from the town, no trade, no great king ruling over everything. The players will, quite literally, shape the land and its history.

I plan to run the game similar to how Shilsen has described his Story Hour campaign - I'll scatter out a bunch of plot hooks and allow the players to pick the ones they want to explore. There is no pre-determined plot, and railroading will be quite literally impossible because even I won't be sure of who's doing what until the PCs are about to discover it themselves. This has the advantage of giving the PCs a ton of power to determine their own fates, without me having to fully plan out 10 different plots with related subplots.

If the PCs all die (or retire), I'll advance the timeline and start up a new party of PCs 20 or 30 years later. The PCs' previous characters will be worked into the history of the town and surrounding areas, and their deeds will form the seeds of legends.

On the other side of the coin, there will be a lot of house rules and restrictions. PCs will, at least for the first generation, be human only. And by "human", I mean PHB page 13 and that's it. Classes will be restricted as well, but not as much; I havn't decided the full extent of the restriction, but there'll still be a good variety to choose from (including non-PHB classes). Feats will be pretty open, but every feat choice will require DM approval. If the PCs discover new races, classes, etc during their adventures, I'll allow those to new characters following a timeline advancement.

The campaign will be as fast-paced as I can make it. I will be strict about people posting at least 5 times a week; I'm working under a bit of a deadline, after all. The upside is the game should hopefully move pretty rapidly. There will be plenty of social, wilderness, and urban plot hooks to follow in addition to combat ones.



Anyway, who would be interested in a campaign such as this?
 

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Vigwyn the Unruly

First Post
I would totally be in. I am particularly intrigued by the immersive sound of this, and by the feeling that there is a whole wide world waiting to be discovered "out there." Actually I just got a bit of a chill thinking about it. Sounds a lot like the first several chapter of LotR, except, you know, without the hobbits and dwarves. ;)
 

EvolutionKB

First Post
I am posting just see where this may go, I am interested, but must ask: Would this game continue and be updated when 4th ed comes around since you are basing things around the new edition somewhat?
 

Zurai

First Post
EvolutionKB said:
I am posting just see where this may go, I am interested, but must ask: Would this game continue and be updated when 4th ed comes around since you are basing things around the new edition somewhat?

Yes, assuming it's still going at the time. There'd be a vote to see which edition people wanted to continue in (with the option to retire the 3E characters and start new 4E ones).

I'm not really basing things around the new edition so much as I'm using the new edition to get off my ass and develop this campaign world that I've been sitting on for years.
 


Nac Mac Feegle

First Post
This sounds interesting, I think I'd give it a shot.

From the amount of thought you seem to have given it, do you expect multiple party-kills as a big possibility (I'm not particularly against this, I like a good rebuild now and then, I'm mainly wondering).
 

Zurai

First Post
That depends entirely on the party! :D

I'm not planning to pull punches like I do with my local group. I give them modified Eberron Action Points, and the party can collectively spend 3 APs to prevent a character's death (which HAS happened). If you guys die, I won't tilt the dice to prevent it. That said, a TPK in this campaign will only mean a timeline advance and a new set of characters, it's not Game Over by any means. As such, I may throw some tougher fights at you. I may also prompt "retire and timeline skip" votes periodically - not forcing you to, but giving the option. I do want to get more than one time period covered, but I can do that with a second game if this first group is really digging the setting and wants to continue their first gen characters. Basically, it's going to be very much up to the PCs how often they want to hit the reset button.

I plan to wave a lot of carrots in front of your collective noses to entice people to want to advance the timeline to get access to cool new features from level 1. I don't anticipate too many TPKs, honestly - I'd rather your characters lived on as high priests, wanderers, diplomats, and even kings, rather than die as martyrs. Still, every mythology needs its martyr...
 

Max

First Post
This sounds like fun - getting to "create history" for a campaign world. I'd be interested.

I must say, I have this vision of a wizened little scribe following the PC's around recording their every word and deed, though. :D

Max
 


Fenris

Adventurer
Zurai,
Sounds like a great concept. Backstories written by the players, even modest ones can provide so much context for you to base plot hook and further ideas from. I'd love to see this take shape and play.
 

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