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.

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