Well, having read a bunch of threads that have been continuing the edition war, albeit in a much more civil tone, I decided I needed something different. I thought it might be fun to create a thread around how you've married the rules you play under with the campaign setting. A request though, while we can discuss each others choices in how we do this(in fact I would encourage it) I'd recommend against making outright suggestions that a different rule set would work better. We all know where that seems to lead. I want to hear how you have made the rules and your campaign world fit together, especially people who play rules that are different than my preferred rule set (4e). I guess I want everyone to remember we are playing games that are ultimately much more similar than different, and that we have all sorts of great ideas to share and inspire each other with.
Anyways, my campaign world.
We started out in a slightly modified nentir vale (i loved how open ended they left this, made me feel as a dm I had a lot of freedom to change things without messing up the "PoL Setting." ) The gods are all norse gods, which I found easy to do since 4e has divorced much of the mechanics of clerics and other divine characters from the fluff of the 4e gods. Mostly it's been choosing a god from the 4E world and finding the norse equivalent. It's been a thousand years since what many people believe was Ragnarok severely damaged the world. At this time, dragons first appeared, along with the dragonborn.
The party is made up of 2 drow, a duergar, a githyanki, a human and an elf. These races also have fit in well with the norse mythology. LOts of roleplaying opportunities have been afforded because of the rules allow PC's to be strange races and still appear balanced (as former DDM players, my players all value balance between the classes). Skill challenges, while sometimes tough to run as written, have really encouraged a lot more role playing on the part of my players, and as they have become more comfortable with it, has allowed us to move away from skill challenges in our role playing of social encounters. As they move up in levels, I look forward to having them get artifacts (thors hammer, odin's spear), exploring the planes (which they will find actually are very close to the old planescape version, the lack of the planer cosmology in game mechanics allowing me to use my old planescape materials) and possibly even fighting some (re)vengeful giants.
Another thing that I'm doing is using the concept of quest rewards to have each PC have a small side quest that they are working to complete that each location they go to they complete a little bit more of it. One character is the daughter of shopkeepers and has been inducted into a secret cabal bent on searching for rare and interesting items, the divine characters are searching for information on the gods, etc...
Basically, the fact that 4e has really clear cut combat rules keeps my former DDM players very engaged, while the lack of much else has really allowed me to explore creating a world (this is my first time running players through a world I have created).
A mechanics question though, we use the social skills and knowledge skills occasionally outside of a skill challenge, but what about some of the other skills, like endurance, athletics and acrobatics? What about theivery? I'd like to use these, but without a skill challenge, I'm struggling as to how to make a failure meaningful in these. What kind of situations do you present where those are useful?
Anyways, thanks for reading, and I really love to hear from other people, how has the rules you play under inspired or affected your campaign and your campaign world?
Anyways, my campaign world.
We started out in a slightly modified nentir vale (i loved how open ended they left this, made me feel as a dm I had a lot of freedom to change things without messing up the "PoL Setting." ) The gods are all norse gods, which I found easy to do since 4e has divorced much of the mechanics of clerics and other divine characters from the fluff of the 4e gods. Mostly it's been choosing a god from the 4E world and finding the norse equivalent. It's been a thousand years since what many people believe was Ragnarok severely damaged the world. At this time, dragons first appeared, along with the dragonborn.
The party is made up of 2 drow, a duergar, a githyanki, a human and an elf. These races also have fit in well with the norse mythology. LOts of roleplaying opportunities have been afforded because of the rules allow PC's to be strange races and still appear balanced (as former DDM players, my players all value balance between the classes). Skill challenges, while sometimes tough to run as written, have really encouraged a lot more role playing on the part of my players, and as they have become more comfortable with it, has allowed us to move away from skill challenges in our role playing of social encounters. As they move up in levels, I look forward to having them get artifacts (thors hammer, odin's spear), exploring the planes (which they will find actually are very close to the old planescape version, the lack of the planer cosmology in game mechanics allowing me to use my old planescape materials) and possibly even fighting some (re)vengeful giants.
Another thing that I'm doing is using the concept of quest rewards to have each PC have a small side quest that they are working to complete that each location they go to they complete a little bit more of it. One character is the daughter of shopkeepers and has been inducted into a secret cabal bent on searching for rare and interesting items, the divine characters are searching for information on the gods, etc...
Basically, the fact that 4e has really clear cut combat rules keeps my former DDM players very engaged, while the lack of much else has really allowed me to explore creating a world (this is my first time running players through a world I have created).
A mechanics question though, we use the social skills and knowledge skills occasionally outside of a skill challenge, but what about some of the other skills, like endurance, athletics and acrobatics? What about theivery? I'd like to use these, but without a skill challenge, I'm struggling as to how to make a failure meaningful in these. What kind of situations do you present where those are useful?
Anyways, thanks for reading, and I really love to hear from other people, how has the rules you play under inspired or affected your campaign and your campaign world?
