The last (?) issues brought up so far: Crowding and Absence. (Let me know if there's something not closely linked to the previous posts that I've missed.)
How many players/how many characters? Parties seem to get unwieldy after about 6 characters. Partly this is just because stereotypical adventuring isn't built for it -- 10 foot corridors are too tight for more people. :) And also, with too many "main" characters, it's hard to build a narrative with everyone getting some attention.
That's not to say it's impossible, particularly if the game works not as one party, but as separate "scenes", with a few people here, a few people there, affecting each other's situation as they go along...
I'd love to be able to run something like that. However, I think the amount of time and energy required for administration (by me) might be far more than I'm willing or able to provide. If the revenue from the game reaches the point when I can do it as a full time job, then we'll try it out. ("Revenue? What revenue?" Stop freaking out -- it's just a joke.)
I am hoping that some players will prefer to be "character actors" - running several characters who aren't "proper" PCs: the mysterious druid, the barkeeper, the prince, the villain. As a result, the main party will be in the more typical 3-7 person range.
I have the theory that then the DM's role will more often be that of referee, rather than referee _and_ source of conflict. If the bad guy figures out what the secret plan is, it's got nothing to do with what the DM knows, just that the bad guy really was clever. Also, the "NPC's" can be more 3-dimensional, with more personal effort being put into them, and on several occasions, players won't know if they're interacting with a DM mouthpiece, or with another player.
In terms of DM's "cpu time", I'd like to think that players running more of the story characters would make for less work for the DM day-to-day, but surely that will be offset by getting information to and from more people. But overall, I'm optimistic that this would give more of the DM's personal attention to your character, and a better story, than if we had one big 12 character party. In addition, some people might find playing occasionally-occurring characters easier on their schedules than striving to send an update every day.
Which brings us to player's absence, or at least nonresponsiveness. I like the idea of "phasing", partly because it reminds me so much of Vaarsuvius's conveniently appearing familiar in Order of the Stick. I recall treating absent people in tabletop games in much the same way.
My concern is that "absence" in a blog game is bound to be more stilted, because of the time dilation. Not being around for a 4 hour game session makes it easier to elide the character away; if someone is out sick for a day right in the midst of their character rescuing the rest of the party from the mind flayer's clutches, it's hard to throw them into hibernation. Perhaps this would work, if every day (or at least every week) of gameplay had some closure. If every fight were concluded in one day, then having someone phase out could work, while having someone phase out mid-battle would be hard to manage.
It seems to me that this is one of the tradeoffs of the blog (or online, non-live) format. If the players are willing to give up some of the control of their character, the game can move along faster. If you give up some of the granularity of the combat process, then the combat can be resolved in a few days, rather than a few weeks. If alternatively you accept that when you're absent, your character will have an "understudy" representing you, then the game won't be halted waiting for people.
But these aren't tradeoffs for me as much as they're tradeoffs for y'all. What do you think -- what do you want to happen to your character when you're unavailable? How specific do you want to make your combat decisions?
Friday, September 30, 2005
Next hot topic: dialogue.
It is my impression (and you can correct me if I'm wrong) that many of the prospective players here are fans of dialogue, character interaction, and the game as a vehicle for producing an interesting story.
On the other hand, part of the history and nature of D&D is rolling dice to determine winners and losers in combat -- noble barbarians fighting an evil dragon, and you get to BE a barbarian! And you could argue that by making the combat sequences the most important part of the game, as well as the most character-choice driven, the action becomes more engaging than in any movie, even Rocky. (Although a good soundtrack counts for a LOT.)
However, I think that the detailed combat in D&D doesn't suit the blog format very well (because the time slowdown becomes acute, because you lose the fun of rolling dice, because for all that player control, most rounds boil down to either "I hit him again" or "I run away",...) Also, it's virtually impossible to stick to the round-by-round system and give players the freedom of choice they deserve without them all having a copy of the Players Handbook, which is way outside my "you don't have to know the rules" policy.
So there are really several issues. First, what should the balance be between dialogue/story, puzzles and other "nonthreatening" challenges, and combat? Like I said, my impression is that lots of people would like to have their characters make interesting decisions and interact with each other and the world around them, and spending months resolving a fight with a bunch of orcs would be a drag.
Second, how will dialogue work in an online format? Can we make it work better than serial monologues?
Third, how will combat work in an online format? Can we streamline it so it doesn't take forever, while still keeping it player-driven?
Note that I said "online format" and not "blog". I don't think we need to limit ourselves to blogs, and if it's feasible to use something like openrpg, or less exotically, an IRC or other chat method for dialogue, then I'm all for trying it out. Live-action dialogue faces the issue of different time zones, but I think it might work some of the time.
Alternatively, a sort of retroactive editing is possible: one person sends what they guess will be their side of the conversation, the second person intersperses comments where they would, and the first person then revises their side so it looks nice. (I'm completely borrowing this idea from Dr. Strangelove). That could give satisfactory results.
A point worth mentioning is that, although a lot of dialogue will be with NPCs, the DM as adjudicator is unnecessary for dialogue. Two or more players can chat in character any way they like, whether I'm aware of it or not. (That two or more players can chat out of character any way they like should be obvious.)
For streamlining combat, I'm all for people describing their combat plan in exciting detail, and then offering some idea of when they'll want to re-evaluate. For example:
For a high enough level character, that's one D&D combat round, but to a first level character, the exact same description is good for about 3 or 4 rounds, and it makes clear that if the character gets hit even once, they'll withdraw out of harm's way. It's also possible to have a "standing order" that for any combat, your character is by default willing to stand and fight until they get, for example, three likely hits away from death.
If I get posts like that regularly, many a combat could be resolved in one day.
It is my impression (and you can correct me if I'm wrong) that many of the prospective players here are fans of dialogue, character interaction, and the game as a vehicle for producing an interesting story.
On the other hand, part of the history and nature of D&D is rolling dice to determine winners and losers in combat -- noble barbarians fighting an evil dragon, and you get to BE a barbarian! And you could argue that by making the combat sequences the most important part of the game, as well as the most character-choice driven, the action becomes more engaging than in any movie, even Rocky. (Although a good soundtrack counts for a LOT.)
However, I think that the detailed combat in D&D doesn't suit the blog format very well (because the time slowdown becomes acute, because you lose the fun of rolling dice, because for all that player control, most rounds boil down to either "I hit him again" or "I run away",...) Also, it's virtually impossible to stick to the round-by-round system and give players the freedom of choice they deserve without them all having a copy of the Players Handbook, which is way outside my "you don't have to know the rules" policy.
So there are really several issues. First, what should the balance be between dialogue/story, puzzles and other "nonthreatening" challenges, and combat? Like I said, my impression is that lots of people would like to have their characters make interesting decisions and interact with each other and the world around them, and spending months resolving a fight with a bunch of orcs would be a drag.
Second, how will dialogue work in an online format? Can we make it work better than serial monologues?
Third, how will combat work in an online format? Can we streamline it so it doesn't take forever, while still keeping it player-driven?
Note that I said "online format" and not "blog". I don't think we need to limit ourselves to blogs, and if it's feasible to use something like openrpg, or less exotically, an IRC or other chat method for dialogue, then I'm all for trying it out. Live-action dialogue faces the issue of different time zones, but I think it might work some of the time.
Alternatively, a sort of retroactive editing is possible: one person sends what they guess will be their side of the conversation, the second person intersperses comments where they would, and the first person then revises their side so it looks nice. (I'm completely borrowing this idea from Dr. Strangelove). That could give satisfactory results.
A point worth mentioning is that, although a lot of dialogue will be with NPCs, the DM as adjudicator is unnecessary for dialogue. Two or more players can chat in character any way they like, whether I'm aware of it or not. (That two or more players can chat out of character any way they like should be obvious.)
For streamlining combat, I'm all for people describing their combat plan in exciting detail, and then offering some idea of when they'll want to re-evaluate. For example:
Trinffi, Slayer of Vampires: I slide under the table and kick the filthy Uruk in the groin. Then I jump over him, split-kicking his two buddies. A couple of deft chops later to clean up, and I expect to be surrounded by unconscious grunts.
If any of them manage to lay a hand on me, I'll be faced with the sickening thought that these guys may be more dangerous than they look, and I'll backflip out of there, kicking one of them in the chops as I go.
For a high enough level character, that's one D&D combat round, but to a first level character, the exact same description is good for about 3 or 4 rounds, and it makes clear that if the character gets hit even once, they'll withdraw out of harm's way. It's also possible to have a "standing order" that for any combat, your character is by default willing to stand and fight until they get, for example, three likely hits away from death.
If I get posts like that regularly, many a combat could be resolved in one day.
Thursday, September 29, 2005
There's been a fair bit of discussion about starting at 1st level, so I'd like to address some of the concerns.
Starting at 1st level appeals to me for a lot of reasons. The list of spell choices is more quickly digestible, the character's stories are developed together rather than apart, and it fits in with the vision I have of a more Renaissance/beginning of history feel for the campaign.
The biggest issue with starting at 1st level, as Scott said, is that the number of hit points you have is perilously close to the amount of damage a typical weapon does. (This is a "feature" of D&D, and I believe it's a holdover from its wargaming roots.) Here's how I plan to mitigate this. First, as Fabio mentions, some challenges the players face will be intellectual, rather than combative. I know there's at least a few players that would prefer more puzzles and dialogue and less combat, especially if it slows down the game. More on this later. Second, as Fabio has also mentioned, the "critical hit" rule is the bane of PCs. I will introduce a rule along the lines that anything with less than 4 HD (or under 4th level) can't make a critical hit. Thirdly, I encourage the players to play their characters, particularly at the beginning, recognizing that getting a knife in the ribs could easily kill anyone, so they should try to avoid being within arm's reach of anyone ornery with a weapon.
As part of the incentive, I'm going to award experience based on obstacles overcome. So, if there was a band of goblins in the road, and you sneak around them or bribe them, you get the same experience as if you defeated them in combat. (There's a catch: if you run into the goblins again later, you don't get experience for them again, even if you do fight them the second time.)
Lastly, this ties into Dr. Strangelove's question about the lethality of the game. While I have some absolutely surreal ideas that I would _love_ to try out for ensuing adventures if the whole party dies, I don't really expect that to happen. I don't want to dismiss the possibility of character death entirely, but I have a hard time setting up a situation where a character is likely to die unless I know they'll have access to being brought back. If the characters don't put themselves in deadly situations, they won't die. (In order to preserve dramatic tension, I won't specify where I consider the line to be between "easy fight" and "deadly situation".)
Starting at 1st level appeals to me for a lot of reasons. The list of spell choices is more quickly digestible, the character's stories are developed together rather than apart, and it fits in with the vision I have of a more Renaissance/beginning of history feel for the campaign.
The biggest issue with starting at 1st level, as Scott said, is that the number of hit points you have is perilously close to the amount of damage a typical weapon does. (This is a "feature" of D&D, and I believe it's a holdover from its wargaming roots.) Here's how I plan to mitigate this. First, as Fabio mentions, some challenges the players face will be intellectual, rather than combative. I know there's at least a few players that would prefer more puzzles and dialogue and less combat, especially if it slows down the game. More on this later. Second, as Fabio has also mentioned, the "critical hit" rule is the bane of PCs. I will introduce a rule along the lines that anything with less than 4 HD (or under 4th level) can't make a critical hit. Thirdly, I encourage the players to play their characters, particularly at the beginning, recognizing that getting a knife in the ribs could easily kill anyone, so they should try to avoid being within arm's reach of anyone ornery with a weapon.
As part of the incentive, I'm going to award experience based on obstacles overcome. So, if there was a band of goblins in the road, and you sneak around them or bribe them, you get the same experience as if you defeated them in combat. (There's a catch: if you run into the goblins again later, you don't get experience for them again, even if you do fight them the second time.)
Lastly, this ties into Dr. Strangelove's question about the lethality of the game. While I have some absolutely surreal ideas that I would _love_ to try out for ensuing adventures if the whole party dies, I don't really expect that to happen. I don't want to dismiss the possibility of character death entirely, but I have a hard time setting up a situation where a character is likely to die unless I know they'll have access to being brought back. If the characters don't put themselves in deadly situations, they won't die. (In order to preserve dramatic tension, I won't specify where I consider the line to be between "easy fight" and "deadly situation".)
In order to include it in the conversation, here's my sister's email in response to my original "I'm starting a bloggy D&D" post:
The conventional wisdom is that it's better to have a properly immersive gameworld, where characters aren't named after pop stars and a dragon's last words are not "I shoulda had a V8." But I don't want to be a culture Nazi and correct people's Shakespearean -- I cannot come up with a more effective way to make players run away from a game. And although the original idea might be a joke, I think an elf named Trinffi whose purpose in life is to slay undead, particularly vampires, and can do crazy spin kicks, is the beginnings of a fine character.
My preference is for people to take on board the idea that their characters are really in the game world, and not talking out through the fourth wall at the audience. However, I can't imagine prohibiting players from commenting on the game in their own voice, if they want to -- on dndblog.powerblogs.com, character's speech is generally in quotes, while player's comments (and occasionally player or character "thoughtbubbles") are clearly distinct from the characters.
Furthermore, I rather like the wit involved in manipulating one's character into a situation for which the natural thing for them to say is "Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!"
So, how "serious" do we want the tone to be? Is there a line past which the friendly banter starts to detract from the storytelling, and if so where is it? I don't feel the need to set ground rules about what's "permitted" and what's not, but it would be good to have a common understanding of how much we plan to repress our natural tendency toward irony.
What's an NPC?Skipping the first two questions, my answers were yes and yes (although I don't think it'll be necessary), and then it got a bit hazy. (Regarding the last one, I'd _love_ to have that, but I don't want to promise more than I can deliver on. Let's say it's on the planning list.) Perhaps the best question for discussion is the "Can I make anachronistic references to television shows and movies?" Or, to put it another way, what's the tone for the game?
What's a PC?
If I don't know what an NPC or PC are can I still play?
If my character dies on the first day, can I get a new character?
Can I be Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Or Trinity? Or a combination of both
(Buffinity? Trinffy?) Can I have a baby panda sidekick?
Can I make anachronistic references to television shows and movies?
As we go through the dungeon, can the map of where we've been be revealed?
Preferably with 3-D topography and interactive hot links to particular
events?
The conventional wisdom is that it's better to have a properly immersive gameworld, where characters aren't named after pop stars and a dragon's last words are not "I shoulda had a V8." But I don't want to be a culture Nazi and correct people's Shakespearean -- I cannot come up with a more effective way to make players run away from a game. And although the original idea might be a joke, I think an elf named Trinffi whose purpose in life is to slay undead, particularly vampires, and can do crazy spin kicks, is the beginnings of a fine character.
My preference is for people to take on board the idea that their characters are really in the game world, and not talking out through the fourth wall at the audience. However, I can't imagine prohibiting players from commenting on the game in their own voice, if they want to -- on dndblog.powerblogs.com, character's speech is generally in quotes, while player's comments (and occasionally player or character "thoughtbubbles") are clearly distinct from the characters.
Furthermore, I rather like the wit involved in manipulating one's character into a situation for which the natural thing for them to say is "Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!"
So, how "serious" do we want the tone to be? Is there a line past which the friendly banter starts to detract from the storytelling, and if so where is it? I don't feel the need to set ground rules about what's "permitted" and what's not, but it would be good to have a common understanding of how much we plan to repress our natural tendency toward irony.
First of all -- Woo hoo! Getting this much interest is more than I hoped for. Apparently there's more web-based leisure time available than I expected. :)
The posts have brought up several points, and I'm gonna try to describe further the things I've thought about, so we all have the same expectations, and I'll ask for more opinions about some of the issues that need some consensus or at least acceptance.
And since the conversation will therefore be wide-ranging, I'll try to split it up over several posts, so that comments to each post will be more specific to the same topic. Of course, I read it all, so don't worry about waiting to comment about character background because I haven't started a post about it.
Okay, first regarding campaign setting. (This hasn't been the source of the most discussion, but it does deserve to get fleshed out.) For starters, the world will be very stereotypically D&D like, in the sense that the technology will look remarkably medieval, magic items and spellcasters will be relatively commonplace, elves and dwarves live a long time and tend to hang out in forests and mountains respectively, etc. I'm happy with the fictional polytheism of 3rd edition D&D, if you're interested in the clergy, but I can adapt to someone's favorite pantheon if they've got one. I won't, however, have Warriors of Odin adventuring with a Follower of Ra to recover St. Cuthbert's Mace from the foul minions of Cthulhu. One (or, if you're willing to help with the backstory for it, two) major religion at a time, please.
I lean towards the "from the inside out" school of setting design, in the sense that I'd like to establish the locale the characters live in first, and worry about bigger stuff (world geography, etc.) later as necessary. That said, my plan is to have a wide range of player-driven choice of where you want to go fairly early in -- you could go northeast to the borderlands, or just a little ways south to a neighboring village, or decide you're interested in something else altogether, for example. (And there won't be any particularly "right" or "wrong" choice.) So my idea of "starting small" is still rather largish.
However, details of the start I'm deliberately still vague about, because I want character stories to come from the players, and then we can figure out the sort of place that these folks would meet. I want people to have as complete freedom as possible in choosing their character, and then adopting the world to a sensible one for those characters.
As most of you know, I'm one of those people that thinks too much about, for example, how politics and technology might develop in a world with magic, or various humanoid species, or any of the many things that'll make this a fantasy role playing game. But I don't want to jump the gun and build a beautiful internally consistent world that doesn't accommodate the kind of character you want to play. But as we develop characters, you can be sure that the world will get more specific around them.
Which brings me to a question we should resolve before the adventure starts, so I'll put that in the next post.
The posts have brought up several points, and I'm gonna try to describe further the things I've thought about, so we all have the same expectations, and I'll ask for more opinions about some of the issues that need some consensus or at least acceptance.
And since the conversation will therefore be wide-ranging, I'll try to split it up over several posts, so that comments to each post will be more specific to the same topic. Of course, I read it all, so don't worry about waiting to comment about character background because I haven't started a post about it.
Okay, first regarding campaign setting. (This hasn't been the source of the most discussion, but it does deserve to get fleshed out.) For starters, the world will be very stereotypically D&D like, in the sense that the technology will look remarkably medieval, magic items and spellcasters will be relatively commonplace, elves and dwarves live a long time and tend to hang out in forests and mountains respectively, etc. I'm happy with the fictional polytheism of 3rd edition D&D, if you're interested in the clergy, but I can adapt to someone's favorite pantheon if they've got one. I won't, however, have Warriors of Odin adventuring with a Follower of Ra to recover St. Cuthbert's Mace from the foul minions of Cthulhu. One (or, if you're willing to help with the backstory for it, two) major religion at a time, please.
I lean towards the "from the inside out" school of setting design, in the sense that I'd like to establish the locale the characters live in first, and worry about bigger stuff (world geography, etc.) later as necessary. That said, my plan is to have a wide range of player-driven choice of where you want to go fairly early in -- you could go northeast to the borderlands, or just a little ways south to a neighboring village, or decide you're interested in something else altogether, for example. (And there won't be any particularly "right" or "wrong" choice.) So my idea of "starting small" is still rather largish.
However, details of the start I'm deliberately still vague about, because I want character stories to come from the players, and then we can figure out the sort of place that these folks would meet. I want people to have as complete freedom as possible in choosing their character, and then adopting the world to a sensible one for those characters.
As most of you know, I'm one of those people that thinks too much about, for example, how politics and technology might develop in a world with magic, or various humanoid species, or any of the many things that'll make this a fantasy role playing game. But I don't want to jump the gun and build a beautiful internally consistent world that doesn't accommodate the kind of character you want to play. But as we develop characters, you can be sure that the world will get more specific around them.
Which brings me to a question we should resolve before the adventure starts, so I'll put that in the next post.
Monday, September 26, 2005
I am planning to run a D&D campaign through a blog. Yes, like the one at dndblog. My plan is to mimic that blog, while adopting some policies that I hope will make the new blog exciting and accessible to more people, who might not be as diehard as the dndblog folks. This will be an experiment, and if some ideas really don't work as well as I'd hoped, I'll fall back on the way Scott does things in the dndblog.
And while I was thinking about all the cool stuff I hoped to do, and thought about how I should arrange it, it occurred to me that if I don't get people on board to play it, it won't much matter whether I think it's cool or not.
So, before my creative attempts spiral out of control, I'd like to hear from you what you'd like in a D&D campaign run over the web.
I'm assuming that players will want a game that delivers a lot of entertainment and only a small time commitment on their part. I'm also trying to offer a game with a different experience than, say, playing Everquest, since players could do that instead if they wanted to. I'd like to use the advantages of the online blog format, and minimize the effect of the disadvantages.
Here are the key ideas of the blog I was thinking about:
These are ideas about the structure of the game, and they're designed to make the "burden" of playing the game as light as possible. If you just want to be involved for a week or two, that's fine: you can take over whatever NPCs the party is running into. If you don't want to dig through the books and figure out what the right feat is for you, don't worry about it, and when you describe yourself as hacking and slashing left and right, the DM will make sure you get feats that make you hack and slash most effectively. And regardless, the action of playing the game is simple: every day you check the blog, post what your character does for the next little while, and then you don't have to check the blog again until tomorrow. And if you miss a day or two, no big deal -- your character won't stand there like a dummy.
Of course, people will also have opinions about the story and background of the campaign -- is this in some particular setting that they already know about, is it significantly different from the setting described in the D&D books, does the DM hate paladins, etc. I don't want to give the impression that the above ideas are written in stone, but in terms of setting, I'm even more flexible. If some idea here seems stupid or not something you'd be happy with, please let me know, because D&D is in some sense collaborative storytelling, and players won't play their parts if they think the background and descriptions of the world they're in is lame. And who can blame them?
I would like to run a D&D 3.5e campaign, with as few changes to the general background as possible, so all the usual classes, races, spells, etc. are there, and if you see something in the books, you can be pretty sure it's in this campaign. (There may be weird and wonderful stuff later on, but I'm in favor of starting basic first.) I probably can't help tweaking a few things, but it'll be things like making monks less common, not completely eliminating them. That's not to say they'll be insignificant changes (if you're a monk, it'll be harder to find someone to train you to get a new level), but they won't be flat-out "no you can't do that" changes. Unless you're trying to game the system. :)
I'd like to borrow liberally from many sources. If you've played D&D for a long time, you'll find some of the locations eerily familiar ("Here we are, in this Keep, which is on the Borderlands..."), but hopefully not so familiar that you'll know where the traps are. Some of the places and people might remind you of historical figures. Hopefully not hokey "and it turns out that Lisa, the princess you rescued, is posing for a portrait by the royal painter, Leonardo" vignettes. Instead, I hope that sometimes it'll become evident that the moody noble youngster just might be as clever and doomed as Hamlet, or that the Thieves' Guild is operating very much like Al Capone's mob did.
I'd like to be "realistic" (a dangerous word in D&D). By that I mean, if someone asks "what are the dwarves eating, if they live in the mountains?" I want to have an answer. If the characters don't know the answer, they should be able to go find out, and the answer shouldn't be a lame one like "dwarves come from the rock, and get their sustenance magically from being in touch with the stones, except for the dwarf characters, who have to eat like regular people."
I have some more specific ideas, like decentralizing the role of elves and making "halflings" more like hobbits and less like Gypsies. I think I'd like to set everything in Greyhawk, except make the different regions have accents and cultures more closely mimicking the real world. Another background idea I have is that while many settings are set at a sort of "twilight" or "dark ages" period of history (the White Wolf RPGs are particularly end-of-the-world type settings), I'd like to maybe be in more of a "dawn of time" or "renaissance" period, where there's lots to explore, the cultural institutions are still in development, and there's generally a more optimistic feeling.
Also, I'd like to start PCs off at 1st level. I know a lot of experienced players don't like that, but it seems to me that it's easier to come up with PC background if there isn't that much background to come up with, and low-level characters aren't limited to fighting orcs and goblins and giant rats again and again if you're clever about it. But if you're convinced it wouldn't be fun, tell me why you think so.
Lastly, in between game structure and story setting, is the "dressing": how the webpage looks, what kind of pictures/sounds/etc are part of the story; in other words, what cool stuff do I hope to do to "enhance the experience?"
I'd like to make as much use of multimedia as I can: I've got lots of digital pictures I'd like to edit into game scenes and characters. I'd like to gain enough computer audio stuff to include cool sound effects like a bustling marketplace or the buzz of conversations in a tavern. But I plan to develop as I go -- it doesn't seem practical to me to develop a myriad of sights and sounds until there's actually proof that enough people want to play to make it a workable project.
So, tell me what you think. Am I way off base? Would you and all your friends come play on my proposed blog, if it weren't for the one-turn-a-day rule? Is a cobbled-together mishmash of a setting too clumsy, or would it be quirky and fun? What ideas are unworkable? Where I've been vague, what specific ideas do you crave? Are there ideas that spun off better ideas in your head?
Enough questions for you? Please give me some feedback, as I really do want to make a D&D blog that you'd love to play on, that you would get your non-D&D friends to look at. And maybe even try out.
And while I was thinking about all the cool stuff I hoped to do, and thought about how I should arrange it, it occurred to me that if I don't get people on board to play it, it won't much matter whether I think it's cool or not.
So, before my creative attempts spiral out of control, I'd like to hear from you what you'd like in a D&D campaign run over the web.
I'm assuming that players will want a game that delivers a lot of entertainment and only a small time commitment on their part. I'm also trying to offer a game with a different experience than, say, playing Everquest, since players could do that instead if they wanted to. I'd like to use the advantages of the online blog format, and minimize the effect of the disadvantages.
Here are the key ideas of the blog I was thinking about:
Gameplay Structure
- Every day in real life, a D&D turn goes by. So everybody has a day to post what their character does, and they can be confident that when they check the website the next day, they'll be able to see the results of their last post and post again. (Obviously, there will be hiatuses, when the DM [me] is on vacation or something like that. But this is the normal scheme of things.)
- If a player doesn't post during that day, the DM will assume their character behaves typically for that turn, and will role-play that character as appropriately as he can.
- A player doesn't need to know the D&D rules at all. If you want to give me a description of what you want your character to be like, I'll generate stats for such a character. If you describe the feats of derring-do your character takes each turn, I'll interpret them in game terms in order to decide the result. (This option requires faith that the DM is interpreting the rules fairly and consistently.)
- I would like to provide the opportunity for less-active players (or players that don't want to be tied down to one character) to play "bit parts" and other characters that would otherwise be NPCs. The adventuring party doesn't know, when they run into a goblin king, if the DM or someone else is running him. (In these situations, the DM can step out of the action, and simply referee the interaction between characters.)
These are ideas about the structure of the game, and they're designed to make the "burden" of playing the game as light as possible. If you just want to be involved for a week or two, that's fine: you can take over whatever NPCs the party is running into. If you don't want to dig through the books and figure out what the right feat is for you, don't worry about it, and when you describe yourself as hacking and slashing left and right, the DM will make sure you get feats that make you hack and slash most effectively. And regardless, the action of playing the game is simple: every day you check the blog, post what your character does for the next little while, and then you don't have to check the blog again until tomorrow. And if you miss a day or two, no big deal -- your character won't stand there like a dummy.
Campaign Setting
Of course, people will also have opinions about the story and background of the campaign -- is this in some particular setting that they already know about, is it significantly different from the setting described in the D&D books, does the DM hate paladins, etc. I don't want to give the impression that the above ideas are written in stone, but in terms of setting, I'm even more flexible. If some idea here seems stupid or not something you'd be happy with, please let me know, because D&D is in some sense collaborative storytelling, and players won't play their parts if they think the background and descriptions of the world they're in is lame. And who can blame them?
I would like to run a D&D 3.5e campaign, with as few changes to the general background as possible, so all the usual classes, races, spells, etc. are there, and if you see something in the books, you can be pretty sure it's in this campaign. (There may be weird and wonderful stuff later on, but I'm in favor of starting basic first.) I probably can't help tweaking a few things, but it'll be things like making monks less common, not completely eliminating them. That's not to say they'll be insignificant changes (if you're a monk, it'll be harder to find someone to train you to get a new level), but they won't be flat-out "no you can't do that" changes. Unless you're trying to game the system. :)
I'd like to borrow liberally from many sources. If you've played D&D for a long time, you'll find some of the locations eerily familiar ("Here we are, in this Keep, which is on the Borderlands..."), but hopefully not so familiar that you'll know where the traps are. Some of the places and people might remind you of historical figures. Hopefully not hokey "and it turns out that Lisa, the princess you rescued, is posing for a portrait by the royal painter, Leonardo" vignettes. Instead, I hope that sometimes it'll become evident that the moody noble youngster just might be as clever and doomed as Hamlet, or that the Thieves' Guild is operating very much like Al Capone's mob did.
I'd like to be "realistic" (a dangerous word in D&D). By that I mean, if someone asks "what are the dwarves eating, if they live in the mountains?" I want to have an answer. If the characters don't know the answer, they should be able to go find out, and the answer shouldn't be a lame one like "dwarves come from the rock, and get their sustenance magically from being in touch with the stones, except for the dwarf characters, who have to eat like regular people."
I have some more specific ideas, like decentralizing the role of elves and making "halflings" more like hobbits and less like Gypsies. I think I'd like to set everything in Greyhawk, except make the different regions have accents and cultures more closely mimicking the real world. Another background idea I have is that while many settings are set at a sort of "twilight" or "dark ages" period of history (the White Wolf RPGs are particularly end-of-the-world type settings), I'd like to maybe be in more of a "dawn of time" or "renaissance" period, where there's lots to explore, the cultural institutions are still in development, and there's generally a more optimistic feeling.
Also, I'd like to start PCs off at 1st level. I know a lot of experienced players don't like that, but it seems to me that it's easier to come up with PC background if there isn't that much background to come up with, and low-level characters aren't limited to fighting orcs and goblins and giant rats again and again if you're clever about it. But if you're convinced it wouldn't be fun, tell me why you think so.
Look and Feel
Lastly, in between game structure and story setting, is the "dressing": how the webpage looks, what kind of pictures/sounds/etc are part of the story; in other words, what cool stuff do I hope to do to "enhance the experience?"
I'd like to make as much use of multimedia as I can: I've got lots of digital pictures I'd like to edit into game scenes and characters. I'd like to gain enough computer audio stuff to include cool sound effects like a bustling marketplace or the buzz of conversations in a tavern. But I plan to develop as I go -- it doesn't seem practical to me to develop a myriad of sights and sounds until there's actually proof that enough people want to play to make it a workable project.
Here's Where You Come In
So, tell me what you think. Am I way off base? Would you and all your friends come play on my proposed blog, if it weren't for the one-turn-a-day rule? Is a cobbled-together mishmash of a setting too clumsy, or would it be quirky and fun? What ideas are unworkable? Where I've been vague, what specific ideas do you crave? Are there ideas that spun off better ideas in your head?
Enough questions for you? Please give me some feedback, as I really do want to make a D&D blog that you'd love to play on, that you would get your non-D&D friends to look at. And maybe even try out.
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