ZEITGEIST Thoughts on Zeitgeist

[Retreater]

I was initially not that interested in Zeitgeist, but the Guide looks awesome, so my first impression is slowly changing.

The main concern I have is that urban campaigns don't seem to work well for my group. Ptolus, Council of Thieves, the Grey Citadel, Lankhmar, and Freeport (as well as other homebrew settings), have all had similar issues: too many factions for the party to join, too much intrigue for the players to keep up with, too many directions to take, and help too close to bail them out of trouble. A further annoyance of mine is the way a city adventure allows a party to go "nova" and retreat back to their safe house.

My hopes are that 1) the enormity of Flint doesn't overwhelm players and DMs; 2) the adventures are structured in a way that players don't feel lost in the urban jungle; 3) the level of intrigue doesn't cause players' heads to hurt.

Basically, my group gets together once every two weeks or once a month. A lot is forgotten during that time period with work, kids, etc. Many players will not take the time to advance their characters, read session notes via email, etc. A game requiring a lot of mysteries and clue-seeking will be lost on them.

What are your hopes, concerns, etc., about Zeitgeist?

Retreater

 

[Colmarr]

I plan on keeping a Story Hour (see my sig) to keep track of who did or said what, which should hopefully minimise information loss but IIRC there has been mention in various posts of player handouts throughout the AP to refresh the players' memories of who the various factions and NPCs are.

 

[Rugult]

As a side note, it is my understanding that while Flint is a large part of the campaign, there aren't an overwhelming number of 'urban' adventures. I believe that the second adventure would be considered the urban adventure in the series, with the others having sections set within Flint and then onto other locations.

Hopefully that soothes some of your city fears Retreater

 

[RangerWickett]

If I could find someone able to code such a thing, I would love it if we could set up some sort of campaign home base here on EN World, where the GM could log into his or her account, and tag the accounts of players playing their ZEITGEIST campaign.

Then we could have tools to let the GM easily keep tabs on what has happened so far. Like, you could select the various NPCs of a given adventure and toggle whether the PCs have met them, and what information they've found out so far. And you could add your own. Then players could log in and easily be reminded, "Yeah, that's Reed Macbannin. He's the district mayor of The Nettles, and we owe him a favor because he let us do X."

I'm not sure how workable it is, or if it would be worth the effort, but I think it would be cool if we could do it.

 

[OnlineDM]

Then players could log in and easily be reminded, "Yeah, that's Reed Macbannin. He's the district mayor of The Nettles, and we owe him a favor because he let us do X."

Ah, Mayor McCheese... such memories.

 

[Riastlin]

[MENTION=63]RangerWickett[/MENTION]: That would actually be awesome. Even if the players did not participate in it all that much it would be a great help to DMs since even we can run into issues of "Did I tell them this?" or "Have they met Chuck yet?" That being said, I have no idea how easy or difficult it would be to code something like that. My guess is that its probably a bit more difficult than it seems, but who knows.

Anyhoo, my hopes for Zeitgeist, based on what I've seen so far, is that it ends up not only being a rich setting in terms of flavor, but also a campaign where each particular playthrough can feel unique -- i.e. different groups have notably different experiences in it even up to possibly different "succesful" outcomes. The factions and prestige, etc, certainly seem like they could be used to provide a unique experience for everyone.

Also, from what I've read about the second adventure, I'm really looking forward to it. Sounds like a murder mystery which I would love to see how its being implemented. I've always wanted to run a murder mystery type scenario, but frankly, I think that mysteries are probably the most difficult story to craft since its a very fine line between making it too obvious and making it so obscure that nobody could have gotten it without simply guessing, and a good mystery falls right in the middle of that very fine line. Mysteries in D&D are particularly troublesome too because you need to make sure you don't end up road blocking the players or having the authorities call in Sherlock Holmes to figure it out while the players look dumbly at each other.

Finally, and perhaps most annoyingly, I'm really looking forward to the epic tier. The blurb about the campaign taking place almost entirely on the material plane has me excited about epic tier. It certainly sounds like there will be a lot of custom monsters/NPCs there which is good not only because WotC is sorely lacking in epic tier support, but they are particularly lacking in epic tier creatures that are native to the material planes. The vast majority of epic creatures seem to be demons, undead and dragons. Sure, those are fun, but you need some other critters to put in between them. By the way, I say annoyingly because I will have to wait so long for the awesomeness that will be the new epic tier critters (almost certainly after my current home game hits epic tier based on the 3 year comment).