An Experiment
My group and I are looking at 4E as a chance for an experiment. While I was growing up, there was a very vibrant gaming community where I lived. There were multiple games happening in multiple systems. Some games were short lived or one-shots, others were the epic style game of humble origins blossoming into rich and complex narratives (such as the Ravenloft game I ran for some 8 years).
Times have changed, folks are older and have different commitments. Some folks I used to run with don't really want to hassle with tabletop gaming, and instead go the route of WoW. There are still a few of us wanting to play a good, hearty tabletop game with lots of action, character development, and narrative depth. However, the obligations of our lives inhibit the amount of time we can spend on world building and all that fun stuff.
Another GM that I play with (he runs his game sometimes, I run my game sometimes) and I are working on a way to not only do cool co-operative world building stuff in a PoL setting, but to also have a way to familiarize ourselves and the groups we're running for with 4e.
We're going to start with a basic town. In that town will be an adventurer's guild. Each player will have 2 to 3 characters in that guild. The other GM and I will independently develop different ideas for adventures, and using an internet message board that all the players will sign up to, we'll post job notices (and other IC information) along with OOC information (such as the date of when the game will be run, the approximate length of the session, how many sessions it might take, etc.).
As the other GM and I develop adventures in a kind of tabula rasa, we're hoping to develop a synergistic meta-narrative for the world that is engaging, while also permitting for interesting and compelling character development, while still rocking different styles of game-play/game-mastering.
We'll be having a decently in-depth conversation about some of the logistics of this style of play. I'm hoping that it can work out really well. I'm also hoping that 4e delivers on providing the tools to help eliminate some of the really nuanced aspects of encounter design (not that I don't like it, it's just that I don't have time for it...and i don't want to design half-baked encounters by ignoring the systems and mechanics given to me in order to develop them...maybe just a little neurotic about that).
So...long and short is that, we're really running with the a notion of a few points of light, and a whole lot of unknown inbetween. Hoping it will be good fun.
My group and I are looking at 4E as a chance for an experiment. While I was growing up, there was a very vibrant gaming community where I lived. There were multiple games happening in multiple systems. Some games were short lived or one-shots, others were the epic style game of humble origins blossoming into rich and complex narratives (such as the Ravenloft game I ran for some 8 years).
Times have changed, folks are older and have different commitments. Some folks I used to run with don't really want to hassle with tabletop gaming, and instead go the route of WoW. There are still a few of us wanting to play a good, hearty tabletop game with lots of action, character development, and narrative depth. However, the obligations of our lives inhibit the amount of time we can spend on world building and all that fun stuff.
Another GM that I play with (he runs his game sometimes, I run my game sometimes) and I are working on a way to not only do cool co-operative world building stuff in a PoL setting, but to also have a way to familiarize ourselves and the groups we're running for with 4e.
We're going to start with a basic town. In that town will be an adventurer's guild. Each player will have 2 to 3 characters in that guild. The other GM and I will independently develop different ideas for adventures, and using an internet message board that all the players will sign up to, we'll post job notices (and other IC information) along with OOC information (such as the date of when the game will be run, the approximate length of the session, how many sessions it might take, etc.).
As the other GM and I develop adventures in a kind of tabula rasa, we're hoping to develop a synergistic meta-narrative for the world that is engaging, while also permitting for interesting and compelling character development, while still rocking different styles of game-play/game-mastering.
We'll be having a decently in-depth conversation about some of the logistics of this style of play. I'm hoping that it can work out really well. I'm also hoping that 4e delivers on providing the tools to help eliminate some of the really nuanced aspects of encounter design (not that I don't like it, it's just that I don't have time for it...and i don't want to design half-baked encounters by ignoring the systems and mechanics given to me in order to develop them...maybe just a little neurotic about that).
So...long and short is that, we're really running with the a notion of a few points of light, and a whole lot of unknown inbetween. Hoping it will be good fun.
