This is a terrific idea. I'd definitely participate as a DM, at least.
Is there any reason the DM of one adventure couldn't easily be a player in another?
DMs would have access to the wiki holding all of that secret DM information that the players can't see.
This problem has been on my mind since we started talking about the project. I don't like that DMing can have such severe effect on the possibilities of the individual. What if someone DMs early on and then realizes they'd really rather play? They're just fucked?
I don't have a solution right now, but I firmly believe it's unreasonable to not let someone play if they have DMed.
It's just the issue of playing a module that you've read.
We can either ignore it, and point out that players will get the most out of things if they aren't DMs, or make it binary. There is no more elegant solution, sadly.
Mojo_Jojo on
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
This is a terrific idea. I'd definitely participate as a DM, at least.
Is there any reason the DM of one adventure couldn't easily be a player in another?
DMs would have access to the wiki holding all of that secret DM information that the players can't see.
This problem has been on my mind since we started talking about the project. I don't like that DMing can have such severe effect on the possibilities of the individual. What if someone DMs early on and then realizes they'd really rather play? They're just fucked?
I don't have a solution right now, but I firmly believe it's unreasonable to not let someone play if they have DMed.
It's just the issue of playing a module that you've read.
We can either ignore it, and point out that players will get the most out of things if they aren't DMs, or make it binary. There is no more elegant solution, sadly.
I'm not personally opposed to just ignoring. Since I have a preference for mixing in pre-published content anyway, a little bit of player knowledge is always a possibility for me.
I guess it really just depends how extensively the setting is defined in the wiki. Especially near the beginning I could see DMs playing in other things that take place in different areas from theirs, since there wouldn't really be much metaknowledge available to even have.
I think the DM's all contribute to the world building on it, then have set "content approvers" which okay the added history.
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Sir FabulousMalevolent Squid GodRegistered Userregular
edited November 2010
On the DM/Player thing. You say the world will be constantly changing. The Evil Dragon Sneflug will've been slain in between the time it takes to transition from DM to Player.
I think the best solution is to have a waiting period when you move from DMing to Playing. If the world history is changing as much as you say it is, a dungeon could be very different from one month to the next as you clear out the goblins, but then the trolls move in and make new traps and collapse old rooms and such.
I don't say it'll be constantly changing; it'll change in response to player action. If Sneflug happens to be a level 30 ancient red and most of the players are still level 2, he'll be sticking around for a while. There's really no way to predict how fast things might change, except that it'll be proportionate to the number of adventures going on coterminously.
That's not to say the idea won't work. Hmm.
One cool thing about this idea is that it gives people a chance to try out DM'ing via PBP without committing to a huge campaign. The player/DM issue might impact people's ability to do this, but it's an attractive opportunity.
First, colored me interested, especially as a player.
Second, as the game world evolves and stuff becomes canon, obviously it goes in the wiki, but do DM's necessarily have to put all their deep dark secrets into the wiki before it goes "live" in a game?
In other words, having a completely open wiki that explores the lore and adventures of the world wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. Maybe we have two, if we need to have a place to document all the deep dark secrets of the world, that's cool. But we should definitely have one source where everyone can read about the lore, places, characters and events created as the world builds.
And as far as logistics, would you have a master thread that acted as the in-character tavern, with the main post keeping track of the quest lines and the corresponding threads that represented each adventure hook? Players and DMs meet together in the main thread, but once the party leaves the inn for adventure, the game is take to a fresh thread, designated by a special [MEGA] tag or something.
I don't know...but what I do know is I love the idea.
The DM-wiki would need to be closed as it'll hold maps and dungeons and so forth that the players aren't supposed to see, and we have yet to find a wiki that'll let us selectively block some pages but not others. I can't see a reason not to have a second wiki where players can assemble their lore, post their character sheets and so forth, though.
That's roughly what we're thinking logistics-wise. Adventures might also take place over gametable, maptools, skype, etc for those DMs who want to do that.
I would be interested as a player, and maybe a DM, but if I had to choose, then a player.
One thing that could help the DM load is if they all have access to the same information, then multiple DMs could run a single group of players through an arc. That way if one DM bows out due to time constraints, another is there to pick up the slack. Or if one can only post a couple times a week, then they get two more to fill in the rest of the time. Collabortive DMing.
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Mojo_JojoWe are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered Userregular
I would be interested as a player, and maybe a DM, but if I had to choose, then a player.
One thing that could help the DM load is if they all have access to the same information, then multiple DMs could run a single group of players through an arc. That way if one DM bows out due to time constraints, another is there to pick up the slack. Or if one can only post a couple times a week, then they get two more to fill in the rest of the time. Collabortive DMing.
This is a pretty good idea, but in the vast majority of cases it's the players who holds things up (just by the numbers, you have five players and one DM. So if everybody has the same chance of not being around when they need to post, then you have a much higher chance of it being one of the players).
Still, a good idea and one that I am sure some of our DMs will merrily make use of.
Mojo_Jojo on
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
Quick question from a prospective players POV. What about character levelling? Say I have Brassballs the Orc Cleric milling around the inn, and he joins up with other likeminded folks to save the X from the X. He returns to the inn as a level 4 (or w/e) Cleric.
Does he just wait around the inn for a level 4 adventure to start up, or are player level fluids? Can Brassballs be whatever level is appropriate for the DM? The issue I see is a ton of level 1 adventures starting and then once your character levels he is all but obsolete b/c he can't get into a game without levelling up. Also, would swag from one adventure carryover to others?
Quick question from a prospective players POV. What about character levelling? Say I have Brassballs the Orc Cleric milling around the inn, and he joins up with other likeminded folks to save the X from the X. He returns to the inn as a level 4 (or w/e) Cleric.
Does he just wait around the inn for a level 4 adventure to start up, or are player level fluids? Can Brassballs be whatever level is appropriate for the DM? The issue I see is a ton of level 1 adventures starting and then once your character levels he is all but obsolete b/c he can't get into a game without levelling up. Also, would swag from one adventure carryover to others?
I would think the easiest thing to do re: adventure levels is for DMs to build initially around a level range, then once you get your players (probably restricting the party to 2 levels difference, max), fine-tune the adventure to match.
Ex: I want to run a level 1 to 4 adventure. Interested PCs are of levels 1, 1, 1, 2, and 3. I take them all and run a level 2 adventure.
Ex: I want to run a level 3 to 5 adventure. Six PCs are interested, of levels 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, and 5. I take the 2s and 3s, politely asking the 5 to look elsewhere, then run a level 3 adventure.
Mechanically, this could be vulnerable to power-leveling (ugh!), but I don't think that would be an issue within the scope of this project.
A few other points:
Character-building rules and magic item allocation would need to be standardized (of course).
Loot should carry over, but DMs should consult with their peers before dropping any questionable items.
I think character level is something we can start off doing naturally, but eventually we'll have to standardize. There's enough stuff between a 6 random people and starting an actual adventure that I really don't want to have stray people in a variety of disparate levels who basically can't play.
Loot can be handled a little more dynamically. Presumably all DMs have access to information about standard magic item distribution. They should make efforts to correct dramatic disparity in any party they take out.
This could be the major cost of the project, honestly. If you have one party going through a campaign, you can follow the typical experience and item distribution path with only minor fuss. In this case, with many parties mixing it up amongst eachother with different DMs, we're going to have to really watch the experience closely and react with some snap judgments.
For what it's worth, here's an idea (one that I'm hoping to begin employing this winter quarter depending on my brother-in-law's class schedule) that could allow a veritable cornucopia of opportunities for players in a persistent world:
Have the whole thing based out of Sigil or a Sigil-like location. Rather than simply doors to other planes, make the doors go to parallel realities too: Underdark, Feywild, and the Astral Sea are great, but have paths to Athas, Eberron, a persistent Points of Light setting too; heck, you could even have one going to Gamma World.
DMs can take on the roles of NPCs that control the particular doors for their adventure, and things can still be persistent, but this way you might not lose as much DM or Player interest when new settings are released, because they can visit them once the current adventure gets to a stopping point (without even being required to bench their characters).
This way one group of DMs can work collaboratively on a homebrew setting and still get to take on the role of a player - sans spoilers - if they are interested.
Oh, and it provides an environment suited to action as well as the rich dialog of the World's End Inn with chances to even run adventures within the city if desired.
This also provides a background (the city of Sigil and its own opportunities for troublemaking) that can be used to fill in gaps between characters joining together for the first time. For example, if there's a level-5 game getting started and I don't want to abandon my level 3 Ryan the Psion, then (with DM's permission, of course) I can level him up by relating the tale of his solo adventures in the city.
Or if Jordan the Warden needs to magically acquire some more items before being able to embark with his or her new group, there are vendors aplenty in the city.
And If we're level 7, and Clint the Ardent has to leave, Derek the Cleric can join in with a more internally consistent story than simply "magic", telling of how he found his way to this world through a competing information broker in Sigil - not that "magic" is not a fine explanation, given the game being played. I just know that RP, weaving a rich, impressive tale, is a large part of things in forum games, and it is a lot easier to do that when protagonists don't change names three times with little more than a "These aren't the droids you're looking for."
I like to think of Sigil as the D&D version of the TARDIS or the end of time and maybe that's why I dig it so much, but I just thought it had a lot of potential for this sort of undertaking and figured it was worth chiming in. The biggest downside I can see to it is that it might give too many choices - it would likely be hard to manage an internal wiki that broad (though many hands do make light work).
TL;DR: I think the City of Doors is worth looking into as a setting or at least a home base because it gives players and DMs choices out the wazoo.
I share FWD's opinion. A three-level range should work fine for most adventures, if you don't worry too much about perfect player balance. As long as everyone participates in good faith there shouldn't be too many problems from that area.
One thing with regards to a wiki that lets your hide information. Obsidian Portal has the feature on it's Wiki pages of being to add notes visible to all, and then DM only notes. So, that could be a possibility....
Matev on
"Go down, kick ass, and set yourselves up as gods, that's our Prime Directive!"
The DM-wiki would need to be closed as it'll hold maps and dungeons and so forth that the players aren't supposed to see, and we have yet to find a wiki that'll let us selectively block some pages but not others. I can't see a reason not to have a second wiki where players can assemble their lore, post their character sheets and so forth, though.
That's roughly what we're thinking logistics-wise. Adventures might also take place over gametable, maptools, skype, etc for those DMs who want to do that.
I could easily host a wiki that would be free and under our full control, so that we could have private pages, D&D related integration, etc.
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EvilBadmanDO NOT TRUST THIS MANRegistered Userregular
edited November 2010
This sounds amazing, and I'd love to help by playing or DMing. Would players help shape the basic history of the world prior to the current time or is that a dm thing?
Themindtaker: I love Planescape and I considered Sigil briefly for this, but I really don't think it's suitable. It's too esoteric, most people aren't familiar with it and many people don't like it - we're trying to be as inclusive as possible. Secondly, it wouild be a pain to convert Planescape to 4th edition, and I think it would lose something in the process. Third, you lose the world-building aspect, and the player-initiated quest aspect. Even if you technically can build persistent settings, there's no real incentive to with the infinite planes at your disposal.
If this project hadn't proven popular, or if it eventually tanks, I would strongly consider a Planescape-based variant, but I just don't feel it's right for what we're trying to do. I assume the others agree.
The DM-wiki would need to be closed as it'll hold maps and dungeons and so forth that the players aren't supposed to see, and we have yet to find a wiki that'll let us selectively block some pages but not others. I can't see a reason not to have a second wiki where players can assemble their lore, post their character sheets and so forth, though.
That's roughly what we're thinking logistics-wise. Adventures might also take place over gametable, maptools, skype, etc for those DMs who want to do that.
I could easily host a wiki that would be free and under our full control, so that we could have private pages, D&D related integration, etc.
If you'd be willing this would be wonderful. I'll get back to you soon.
Themindtaker: I love Planescape and I considered Sigil briefly for this, but I really don't think it's suitable. It's too esoteric, most people aren't familiar with it and many people don't like it - we're trying to be as inclusive as possible. Secondly, it wouild be a pain to convert Planescape to 4th edition, and I think it would lose something in the process. Third, you lose the world-building aspect, and the player-initiated quest aspect. Even if you technically can build persistent settings, there's no real incentive to with the infinite planes at your disposal.
If this project hadn't proven popular, or if it eventually tanks, I would strongly consider a Planescape-based variant, but I just don't feel it's right for what we're trying to do. I assume the others agree.
I agree, this project is more Points of Light than Planes feel to me.
In my short stint playing at enworld, it had a similar system but less connection between DMs. Basically everyone had characters in a thread, the tavern, and recruiting was done ICly, and you'd do adventures with different parties and players. I like that part of the concept.
I`d be willing to do the cartography for the overland maps. I`m going to be purchasing Hexographer and the high quality art pack soon. As for the setting... I suggest starting with a frontier town at the edge of civilization with scattered outposts further west like the West Marches style campaing.
SkyCaptain on
The RPG Bestiary - Dangerous foes and legendary monsters for D&D 4th Edition
I`d be willing to do the cartography for the overland maps. I`m going to be purchasing Hexographer and the high quality art pack soon. As for the setting... I suggest starting with a frontier town at the edge of civilization with scattered outposts further west like the West Marches style campaing.
Interestingly close to what some of the others have been suggesting.
We should set things up so that anyone can add their own stuff to the map. So, if we use Hexographer, probably an image on the wiki and a downloadable .hxm file so that anyone can download, modify with the free version of the program, and re-upload the file and image.
So far about twenty people have expressed interest, plus the four of us who first got together. If it's still this popular once we've started, this could turn out really awesome.
A noble effort. I wish you all the best. I have long thought that any online game would be well-served if it could somehow integrate the animosity and factionalism that one tends to find on online fora (present company excluded, of course) into the narrative of the conflict. Having such an open concept might seem to do such a thing, if adventuring parties were to find themselves at cross-purposes of course.
I agree wholeheartedly with your observation about the tragically antithetical relationship between the enthusiasm for PbP games, and their longevity. Anything that can draw the best from both worlds is a project worth undertaking, I would say.
From the point of view of design, however, I have two questions. How would a cluster of even certified DMs ensure that the XP/encounter difficulty/treasure ratios were sufficiently consistent? And how would conflicts between parties working at cross-purposes be resolved?
-Apo
Apophatos on
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Sir FabulousMalevolent Squid GodRegistered Userregular
edited November 2010
I had an idea. Say that you've gotten to level 20 and beat up some pretty tough guys in your time. Maybe you don't want to risk losing him in a dungeon or perhaps you've simply grown tired of them and you want to re-roll.
Could we perhaps "retire" adventurers and have the "heroes of old" go and do their own little thing for awhile? What could be better than going to see your old self for advice. Or perhaps even killing your old hero.
In other words, once adventurers have gotten powerful enough and no-one is running games that include your level range since it's only you and one other guy, you would stop playing those characters and let the DM's decide how the rest of his life will play out.
A noble effort. I wish you all the best. I have long thought that any online game would be well-served if it could somehow integrate the animosity and factionalism that one tends to find on online fora (present company excluded, of course) into the narrative of the conflict. Having such an open concept might seem to do such a thing, if adventuring parties were to find themselves at cross-purposes of course.
I agree wholeheartedly with your observation about the tragically antithetical relationship between the enthusiasm for PbP games, and their longevity. Anything that can draw the best from both worlds is a project worth undertaking, I would say.
From the point of view of design, however, I have two questions. How would a cluster of even certified DMs ensure that the XP/encounter difficulty/treasure ratios were sufficiently consistent? And how would conflicts between parties working at cross-purposes be resolved?
-Apo
Adventures would likely have an approved XP and loot parcel.
A noble effort. I wish you all the best. I have long thought that any online game would be well-served if it could somehow integrate the animosity and factionalism that one tends to find on online fora (present company excluded, of course) into the narrative of the conflict. Having such an open concept might seem to do such a thing, if adventuring parties were to find themselves at cross-purposes of course.
I agree wholeheartedly with your observation about the tragically antithetical relationship between the enthusiasm for PbP games, and their longevity. Anything that can draw the best from both worlds is a project worth undertaking, I would say.
From the point of view of design, however, I have two questions. How would a cluster of even certified DMs ensure that the XP/encounter difficulty/treasure ratios were sufficiently consistent? And how would conflicts between parties working at cross-purposes be resolved?
-Apo
Adventures would likely have an approved XP and loot parcel.
This isn't a bad idea. We could work out a loot-per-encounter-per-adventure system. Would require adjustment, but we're not going for RPGA approval here.
I had an idea. Say that you've gotten to level 20 and beat up some pretty tough guys in your time. Maybe you don't want to risk losing him in a dungeon or perhaps you've simply grown tired of them and you want to re-roll.
Could we perhaps "retire" adventurers and have the "heroes of old" go and do their own little thing for awhile? What could be better than going to see your old self for advice. Or perhaps even killing your old hero.
In other words, once adventurers have gotten powerful enough and no-one is running games that include your level range since it's only you and one other guy, you would stop playing those characters and let the DM's decide how the rest of his life will play out.
I am definetly eager to utilize abandoned characters for my own nefarious means.
Posts
We can either ignore it, and point out that players will get the most out of things if they aren't DMs, or make it binary. There is no more elegant solution, sadly.
I'm not personally opposed to just ignoring. Since I have a preference for mixing in pre-published content anyway, a little bit of player knowledge is always a possibility for me.
How do other people feel about this?
I think the best solution is to have a waiting period when you move from DMing to Playing. If the world history is changing as much as you say it is, a dungeon could be very different from one month to the next as you clear out the goblins, but then the trolls move in and make new traps and collapse old rooms and such.
Switch Friend Code: SW-1406-1275-7906
That's not to say the idea won't work. Hmm.
Second, as the game world evolves and stuff becomes canon, obviously it goes in the wiki, but do DM's necessarily have to put all their deep dark secrets into the wiki before it goes "live" in a game?
In other words, having a completely open wiki that explores the lore and adventures of the world wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. Maybe we have two, if we need to have a place to document all the deep dark secrets of the world, that's cool. But we should definitely have one source where everyone can read about the lore, places, characters and events created as the world builds.
And as far as logistics, would you have a master thread that acted as the in-character tavern, with the main post keeping track of the quest lines and the corresponding threads that represented each adventure hook? Players and DMs meet together in the main thread, but once the party leaves the inn for adventure, the game is take to a fresh thread, designated by a special [MEGA] tag or something.
I don't know...but what I do know is I love the idea.
That's roughly what we're thinking logistics-wise. Adventures might also take place over gametable, maptools, skype, etc for those DMs who want to do that.
One thing that could help the DM load is if they all have access to the same information, then multiple DMs could run a single group of players through an arc. That way if one DM bows out due to time constraints, another is there to pick up the slack. Or if one can only post a couple times a week, then they get two more to fill in the rest of the time. Collabortive DMing.
This is a pretty good idea, but in the vast majority of cases it's the players who holds things up (just by the numbers, you have five players and one DM. So if everybody has the same chance of not being around when they need to post, then you have a much higher chance of it being one of the players).
Still, a good idea and one that I am sure some of our DMs will merrily make use of.
Does he just wait around the inn for a level 4 adventure to start up, or are player level fluids? Can Brassballs be whatever level is appropriate for the DM? The issue I see is a ton of level 1 adventures starting and then once your character levels he is all but obsolete b/c he can't get into a game without levelling up. Also, would swag from one adventure carryover to others?
_____________________________________________
HoTS: Schmutz#1686
I would think the easiest thing to do re: adventure levels is for DMs to build initially around a level range, then once you get your players (probably restricting the party to 2 levels difference, max), fine-tune the adventure to match.
Ex: I want to run a level 1 to 4 adventure. Interested PCs are of levels 1, 1, 1, 2, and 3. I take them all and run a level 2 adventure.
Ex: I want to run a level 3 to 5 adventure. Six PCs are interested, of levels 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, and 5. I take the 2s and 3s, politely asking the 5 to look elsewhere, then run a level 3 adventure.
Mechanically, this could be vulnerable to power-leveling (ugh!), but I don't think that would be an issue within the scope of this project.
A few other points:
Loot can be handled a little more dynamically. Presumably all DMs have access to information about standard magic item distribution. They should make efforts to correct dramatic disparity in any party they take out.
This could be the major cost of the project, honestly. If you have one party going through a campaign, you can follow the typical experience and item distribution path with only minor fuss. In this case, with many parties mixing it up amongst eachother with different DMs, we're going to have to really watch the experience closely and react with some snap judgments.
Have the whole thing based out of Sigil or a Sigil-like location. Rather than simply doors to other planes, make the doors go to parallel realities too: Underdark, Feywild, and the Astral Sea are great, but have paths to Athas, Eberron, a persistent Points of Light setting too; heck, you could even have one going to Gamma World.
DMs can take on the roles of NPCs that control the particular doors for their adventure, and things can still be persistent, but this way you might not lose as much DM or Player interest when new settings are released, because they can visit them once the current adventure gets to a stopping point (without even being required to bench their characters).
This way one group of DMs can work collaboratively on a homebrew setting and still get to take on the role of a player - sans spoilers - if they are interested.
Oh, and it provides an environment suited to action as well as the rich dialog of the World's End Inn with chances to even run adventures within the city if desired.
This also provides a background (the city of Sigil and its own opportunities for troublemaking) that can be used to fill in gaps between characters joining together for the first time. For example, if there's a level-5 game getting started and I don't want to abandon my level 3 Ryan the Psion, then (with DM's permission, of course) I can level him up by relating the tale of his solo adventures in the city.
Or if Jordan the Warden needs to magically acquire some more items before being able to embark with his or her new group, there are vendors aplenty in the city.
And If we're level 7, and Clint the Ardent has to leave, Derek the Cleric can join in with a more internally consistent story than simply "magic", telling of how he found his way to this world through a competing information broker in Sigil - not that "magic" is not a fine explanation, given the game being played. I just know that RP, weaving a rich, impressive tale, is a large part of things in forum games, and it is a lot easier to do that when protagonists don't change names three times with little more than a "These aren't the droids you're looking for."
I like to think of Sigil as the D&D version of the TARDIS or the end of time and maybe that's why I dig it so much, but I just thought it had a lot of potential for this sort of undertaking and figured it was worth chiming in. The biggest downside I can see to it is that it might give too many choices - it would likely be hard to manage an internal wiki that broad (though many hands do make light work).
TL;DR: I think the City of Doors is worth looking into as a setting or at least a home base because it gives players and DMs choices out the wazoo.
I could easily host a wiki that would be free and under our full control, so that we could have private pages, D&D related integration, etc.
The new Character Builder (OH SNAP).
Applying my development skills to hobby projects is what is good in life.
Well now what am I supposed to do with this box of enemies' womens' lamentations I was gonna give you?
Leave it on the step. >_>
If this project hadn't proven popular, or if it eventually tanks, I would strongly consider a Planescape-based variant, but I just don't feel it's right for what we're trying to do. I assume the others agree.
If you'd be willing this would be wonderful. I'll get back to you soon.
I agree, this project is more Points of Light than Planes feel to me.
In my short stint playing at enworld, it had a similar system but less connection between DMs. Basically everyone had characters in a thread, the tavern, and recruiting was done ICly, and you'd do adventures with different parties and players. I like that part of the concept.
Interestingly close to what some of the others have been suggesting.
We should set things up so that anyone can add their own stuff to the map. So, if we use Hexographer, probably an image on the wiki and a downloadable .hxm file so that anyone can download, modify with the free version of the program, and re-upload the file and image.
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This is great news.
I agree wholeheartedly with your observation about the tragically antithetical relationship between the enthusiasm for PbP games, and their longevity. Anything that can draw the best from both worlds is a project worth undertaking, I would say.
From the point of view of design, however, I have two questions. How would a cluster of even certified DMs ensure that the XP/encounter difficulty/treasure ratios were sufficiently consistent? And how would conflicts between parties working at cross-purposes be resolved?
-Apo
Could we perhaps "retire" adventurers and have the "heroes of old" go and do their own little thing for awhile? What could be better than going to see your old self for advice. Or perhaps even killing your old hero.
In other words, once adventurers have gotten powerful enough and no-one is running games that include your level range since it's only you and one other guy, you would stop playing those characters and let the DM's decide how the rest of his life will play out.
Switch Friend Code: SW-1406-1275-7906
Adventures would likely have an approved XP and loot parcel.
This isn't a bad idea. We could work out a loot-per-encounter-per-adventure system. Would require adjustment, but we're not going for RPGA approval here.
I am definetly eager to utilize abandoned characters for my own nefarious means.