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cobaltvector
Dungeonkeeper
7/25/2009 8:14:33 PM
PostID: 297569
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I don't know if anyone would be interested, but I've been thinking that it might be neat if RPM had a refined and completely public D&D campaign setting. I'm not saying that every G.M. would (or even should) run in this setting, but games that did take place in the 'RPM' setting would (eventually) have a large wealth of information to draw on.
The big bonus about doing this is that you could run a game where the players have a strong knowledge of the world around them. When the party walks into a major town, they know a little about it. When a war breaks out between 2 major factions, it means a little more to the players. Published campaigns kind of have this; but when the War of Shadows destroys Neverwinter, or Sarlona invades the Mror Holds most players don't know what I'm talking about (or only a very little). Only in very rare circumstances, do players have enough knowledge and empathy for the setting to truly react appropriately when something major occurs in the setting they are in. If the 'event' does not immediately affect the players in a significant way, the party may not even react at all. Having a setting in which both the G.M. and players have extensive knowledge helps to correct this.
What is really interesting is that those that use the setting could influence it, perhaps by either by having a vote on whether the change occurs or by just offering the change as an optional addendum that other GMs may choose to use. This would allow the setting to grow and expand rather than remain static.
There is also the potential with a unified setting for a player to transfer a character to a different game that uses the setting without any significant change. Disappointed that your game died before you could fully play out your character? With the ability to transfer to a different game you might be able to continue in someone else's game.
To get a setting that appeals to everyone, I would like to see participation in it's creation from a number of people. This should also increase the chances that the setting is actually used. After all, if it's not used, what is the point on working on it? So, the question is, would anyone (besides myself) be interested in attempting this?
This post last edited on 7/25/2009 8:36:59 PM 
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cromt
Destroyer of Worlds
7/25/2009 10:29:59 PM
PostID: 297589
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Interesting idea...
Maybe you should start small at first? A city is easier to care about than a country or a continent.
But how much info would need to be provided so that Arpe-Em city would be played recognizably by very different GMs?
What about Cavectra? Many players are involved in that and Bob already has a lot of info standing by.
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Underworld
Stalwart Guardian
7/25/2009 11:59:40 PM
PostID: 297605
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Likewise I think it's a great concept cobaltvector. However to be successful I think it needs to be more than just a common world for players. Player group interaction based solely on happenstance is probably so unlikely (unless contrived by DMs) that they may as well not be in a common world. Instead I think you need to have common goals for everyone involved. This is one of the reasons why Cavectra is successful. The independent groups will be bought together at some point in (possibly) some great finale. What's slowing Cavectra is the amount of time spent DMing, especially during combat. This is one area that would need to be made simpler and quicker. Zilinox, and others familiar with this site's scripting facilities, might be useful in achieving this objective.
As for common goals, The Keys of Medokh (KoM) (possibly one of the greatest games never finished) is what I imagine would be ideal. (A one line summary of KoM: Seven keys lost throughout the world need to be bought together to unlock something(?) and then . . . ? Did I mention the game was never finished?)
As for a gaming system I think it would need to be simple for several reasons:
1) Easy to learn and possibly adapt.
2) Easy to create scripts for to ease the mundane tasks of DMing.
One such system maybe be Brutal RPG. I wouldn't use all of this system however as the combat system is really designed for a group of people standing around a table; not for PbP play. However the game uses only opposing D6 rolls. The greater your abilities the more D6 die you roll. The combat system would be replaced with a turn based D&D style system (unless someone more familiar with other systems has a better idea). Also this system is already mostly hashed out and is freely downloadable.
I think that's all of my thoughts . . .
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Jeeeeoker
Haggler
7/26/2009 1:10:53 PM
PostID: 297668
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The potential for inconsistency worries me the most. Look at what happened to Forgotten Realms. You mash together the ideas of like 40 different authors, and you get a whole bunch of wacky stuff not relevant to anything else around it.
And then people who are new to the setting still don't care about any of it. So by doing this, you only solve the problem for players who were involved in the setting's creation.
The next problem is what happens if people disagree on fundamental things about the setting? One guy wants ninjas. One guy wants egyptians. One guy wants aliens. One guy wants elder gods lurking beneath the ocean. One guy expects wizards and dragons to be everywhere, while another prefers they be very rare. How would all that be resolved without resorting to autocratic arbitration?
That said, I think the best approach would be to start with the real world as we knew it at some specified point in history (likely somewhere during the iron age or middle ages), and then turn it into an alternate universe by injecting a certain set of fantasy elements that all agree upon up front. Then everyone has a common base they can recognize, but going forward nations and world events become shaped by the fantasy elements that were injected to build a fantasy setting. New players need only familiarize themselves with the timeline of world events that had altered the world from its historical state to the present state.
That should reduce the newbie familiarity problem, and agreeing up front on the nature of the fantasy elements should solve the inconsistency problems.
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cobaltvector
Dungeonkeeper
7/26/2009 1:46:43 PM
PostID: 297672
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********************************************
Please note that while I am the instigator of this thread, it is not my intent to be the primary source, or controller of what comes out of it. (if anything ever does)
It is my intent that the proposed RPM setting be collaborative, as in written and designed by several people and not just myself. Thus the ideas I present, until accepted by those that officially want to join in the effort remain only as ideas.
What I am suggesting is not a single game run by several GMs. Rather, it is a setting (like Eberron, Faerun, Ravenloft, Darksun, etc.) that a GM can refer to when creating his or her own game. This setting would evolve through it's use by GMs in their own games. Players who participate would have the possibility making their own mark on the setting.
*************************************************
D&D is the most popular system on RPM, and thus I would think it wise to stick with is as the primary mechanics of choice. However, as I am only talking about setting, and not mechanics any game system could be used. One G.M. could run a Savage Worlds game in the setting while another could run it in 4.0 D&D and yet another in Gurps.
The core idea is to have a unified environment. Two ways of doing this recommended by the 3.5 DMG are, inward-out and out-ward in. In-ward out, starting with a city and building around it would be easier, but I think it's utility would be lacking. Rather, I propose outward in. Creating a unique Cosmology, setting style, Pantheon, and overall theme and then letting the details trickle down from that.
As for meta-plots..
As someone who was once part of a internationally managed (perhaps mismanaged) LARP, I agree that without a common goals there is little response to players in other games. However, there are some that would not want that interference and that should be respected. There will most likely be GMs that would want to ignore the metaplots entirely, thus I while think they should be large in scope, they should also be written with the thought that not everyone will want to participate at that level.
I don't like the idea of a big finale for the setting, if only because I'd like it to have a long, detailed and at least partially player-driven history. Games played in PbP are excruciatingly slow, you might gain only a single level (in D&D terms) in an entire year. Putting in a end-game scenario even 15 years down the line would probably be far too quick of an ending. I like the idea of giving anyone the opportunity to make his or her mark, to become a legendary hero or villain, to be mentioned by other players down the line as they make their character. The mark a character makes could be as simple as starting a tavern in a major city or as grandiose as conquering an established kingdom. If you are starting at level 1, it would take a couple of years before that becomes even a faint possibility. That is assuming a swift moving game in which you gain around 3 levels a year.
There is an advantage in not taking the Cavectra setting as is. First of all, BoB hasn't given anyone permission to do as such. Secondly, I think that a more inclusive setting would develop through the participation of several individuals. Thirdly, it gives those involved in it's creation a stake in keeping it alive. Finally, it grants some freedom (especially in it's infancy) for a G.M. to create. That is not to say that Cavectra could not be a starting place, perhaps it should. I think we all owe it to hear Bob's say in the matter first though.
On the matter of expanding the settings background through game input after it's creation:
There would have be a process in which a group maintains the core history and decides what gets officially added to the history from other games. This would have to be done to keep a rational unified history together. Other alternate histories could be mentioned, but would be not be official. If someone wanted to run a modern game using the setting, for instance, it might deserve mention (especially if it turns out to be a popular game) but not as a official history of what will occur.
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Gibbon
Jovial Celebrant
7/26/2009 3:56:30 PM
PostID: 297682
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Jeeeeoker: "I think the best approach would be to start with the real world as we knew it at some specified point in history (likely somewhere during the iron age or middle ages), and then turn it into an alternate universe by injecting a certain set of fantasy elements that all agree upon up front."
This is pretty much what we're doing with Reluctant Heroes, which is a multi-DM game along the lines of what cobaltvector is proposing here. RH is set in medieval Europe, around 1300 AD or so, with a good dose of fantasy mixed in (a lot of Tolkien, for example). We've currently got 3 DMs and have had up to five running different areas over the years. Inevitably we've run into the consistency problems that Jeeeeoker lists in his post above, some of which we've dealt with more successfully than others, but generally things seem to work out OK. Different DMs handle different geographic areas, and if new DMs come along they tend to take on areas that aren't currently being run.
Probably the biggest advantage for the DMs of course is collaboration - as well as the "real" history of Europe there's a lot of in-game history in RH now. None of the DMs know it all individually, but between us all we know most of it (well, I think...) So we let each other know what we're doing, borrow/steal from one another, and try to work the other DMs' plots into our own, if only for some peripheral colour to our own threads. But players can follow these of course and move from one thread to another, and back again. And some threads just run themselves with no DM input necessary.
One of the major problems we face is keeping everyone in the same sort of timeline. It's easy for one thread to take a year in real-time but only a month of gameplay, whereas another one could be the reverse, and then everyone is out of sync with everyone else. We tend to gloss over that for the most part, as we haven't really found a satisfactory solution. We have a concept of "time units" that need to get spent each year, but it's not a perfect solution by any means, and only Horseman ever really understood how it worked anyway :)
Not that I'm suggesting RH as the setting for a RPM collaborative world, but I'm sure we could at the least provide some thoughts along the lines of "what we might do differently if we were starting again" if the idea took off. I think a collaborative world is a great idea but suspect it would need some pretty careful management to work well.
This post last edited on 7/26/2009 4:03:16 PM
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BobTHJ
Owner of the Market
7/27/2009 11:25:00 AM
PostID: 297785
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I had been considering suggesting something like this for a while now. In my estimation you would need a committee of sorts that would ensure continuity, decide which events from member games are added to the "official" storyline, and oversee tasks of contributors.
I'm not opposed to using Cavectra as a starting point....Cavectra is already a conglomeration of my own ideas and the ideas of the players (players have contributed to the gameworld both through their creativity in acting and/or backgrouds but also though contests for desiging locations, villians, etc.). However, I personally think it would be fun to start from scratch and develop an entirely new setting.
One way to make this work would be to create a game and allow any interested contributor to join that game. Then votes could be held to decide the common elements and theme of the setting. Votes could also be held to elect the 'oversight committee' that would ensure continuity and delegate tasks. This of course all assumes that there would be enough interested users to make such a system work.
One final note: While I personally would love to take the lead and initiate something like this I've got too much on my plate at the moment as is. I'm afraid someone else will have to take point for getting this going. I however would love to contribute as I have time.
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cromt
Destroyer of Worlds
7/31/2009 7:05:45 PM
PostID: 298411
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Could be neat to have a voting system... And all participants could advertise in their respective games to get people interested in voting/participating? Sometimes I have massive amounts of energy, but at the moment I'm slowing down a bit. I'll be more help when I'm on an up-swing in the fall.
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Jeeeeoker
Haggler
8/1/2009 2:29:11 PM
PostID: 298478
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Advertising and voting systems will destroy everything we hold dear. They ensure that the ideas which succeed are not necessarily the best ideas, but the ones which are easiest to sell, or are being sold by the most popular people.
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cromt
Destroyer of Worlds
8/1/2009 10:34:43 PM
PostID: 298498
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How do we decide what goes and what fits without some kind of voting?
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AlchemicFox
Monsterkeeper
8/2/2009 2:45:19 PM
PostID: 298529
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It looks like everything will be decided with cynicism instead of votes.
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nezumi45
Czar
8/26/2009 3:43:32 PM
PostID: 301655
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A collaborative world sounds like a great idea and I would very much like to GM in it if possible as i think that we could develop different countries within it, that different gms were assigned to and then we had an overseer or two, to make sure the whole thing stays together and an overall distant long term plot to keep it on track at least a little.
This post last edited on 8/26/2009 3:47:12 PM
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cobaltvector
Dungeonkeeper
8/26/2009 9:40:49 PM
PostID: 301714
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I've been a little busy lately, but I hope to start something up soon for contributors.
Your idea is along my line of thought, Nezumi. I don't want such a restrictive universe that only a few people who want to start a game in. However, I myself don't know if I'll have the time to run a game in the setting in the near future and I don't want to sacrifice my other games for it at any rate. That means that you are the only one that has shown any interest as being a GM for it as of current.
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nezumi45
Czar
8/27/2009 5:02:40 AM
PostID: 301744
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I dug out an old 3.5 homebrew project of mine, its along the lines I was thinking about.
"It started long ago when the planes were formed in the great puzzle of creation, pieces were put together anbd taken apart, worlds forged and broken and reused untill the creators were happy. However one particular piece didnt seem to fit anywhere in the great puzzle and so was discarded and left floating aong in the currents of the void
It floated along for millennia, sometimes glancing off the great puzzle touching planes and then pulled away again in the current and it continued this way under fate or mere coincidence interevened.
A great wizard named Meredith who at the time was learing to control planar gates magically touched the point of intersection with this fragment and believed he had found a lost world.The world was named Evelen after the wizards wife. News of his discovery grew thorugh the planes and many nations and powers sought to control and populate this new "world" and some created their own portals, but as fickle as fate is 50 years since its opening the fragment drifted away again forever sealing the portal and its inhabitants were left on their own."
Think of this "world" as a floating plate both sides are inhabitable and the is a connection point between the two a vast shaft known as a nexus.
This would be a blank slate so to speak each gm could have his continent/country
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Jeeeeoker
Haggler
8/27/2009 5:10:09 PM
PostID: 301872
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I like that. It provides the opportunity to throw together things that would not normally have evolved together in the same geographical space (like humans and intelligent monsters). It also means that subsequent GMs can easily add elements by having the plane briefly collide with other worlds, allowing contamination of each plane with elements of the other.
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nezumi45
Czar
8/28/2009 1:50:35 AM
PostID: 301926
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Thats the idea jeeeeoker, some of the ideas I had were along those lines,
that for example orcs and dwarves were forced by circumstance to work together, what sort of society would emerge.
An idea for the overall plot would be that the powers involved would try to gain control of the floating fragment and steer it to where they wanted it to go.
Another would be invasion by the those that live in the void between planes seeing Evelen as a place to call home
It has a lot of ideas to work with and having 2 sides to the world opens up other possibilities for example the underside may not get much light and what would happen it the fragmanet landed on another plane
And how about those caught on the horizontal edge unsure of what lies up or down
These are a couple of ideas I had with this project, What do you think?
This post last edited on 8/28/2009 10:20:14 AM
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cromt
Destroyer of Worlds
8/28/2009 11:03:58 AM
PostID: 301971
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A cult which searches to find the spot wherein their puzzle piece fits...
I like how it is large enough and small enough at the same time. Theoretically it's cut off from the greater world, but at the same time could be quite vast when it comes down to it.
I think what would be needed would be that after each adventure the GM/Player writes up a brief description of what happened and who the characters were so that others can use the characters as NPCs/Historical players. I think the goal would be that most NPCs would be characters from other RPs. (Well, all the important, interesting ones anyways)
A villain may have done things before or after being trounced by one party, attaching their name to an object/dungeon/clan/creature could help bring things closer. The greater number of GMs that like a character, the more often that character shows-up as an NPC, the more legendary the character becomes.
(How's that for voting!)
Making a brand-new unconnected NPC should be a last resort ("Distant cousin of", "Descendant of", "Clansman of", etc. an established character would be a better idea to go for first!)
...
Yeah?
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nezumi45
Czar
8/28/2009 11:11:58 AM
PostID: 301972
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Thats a good point cromt and it would fit in really well the same villains show after a party hears of their defeat by another set of pcs in a different gms story works very well and adds to the games history
and thats a definite plus in my book
One of the ideas I had along the lines of where does the piece fits involves the aboleths who can recall the history of everything find themselves trapped here by chance and are afraid of where they are it has no history as far as they can recall and out of desperation intend to force the fragment to fit somewhere i.e "trimming the edges so to speak"
The other involved the gith believing this is what remains of their homeworld that was overun by the illithids originally after they found ancient remains of their race, intend to use it as a weapon in the ultimate act of vengance intend to crash the fragment into what they believe is the illithid home plane
This post last edited on 8/28/2009 11:22:31 AM
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nezumi45
Czar
8/28/2009 1:35:57 PM
PostID: 301979
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This is a post from a sample of their material I had developed for the game in question
I would be interested to see what you make of it
"During the days of opening, a human Duke named van Dussengrad commisoned groups of explorers to seek out good places to construct towns and forts designed to bring in riches. The explorers for the most part were fairly successfull, two massive veins were discovered rich with geothite ore, a forest was found with abundent lumber however one major discovery was found a vast inland salt lake with an extremely high content of salt, that was suitable for building a
saltern and with a large areas of pasture he could breed cattle combined with the salt , he could see a salted meats economy being very ludicrous. However he had a major concern his finances though vast he could not afford all 3 enterprises at once and he sold the mining rights to the Dwarf King Therid, feeling that the most stable venture would be the saltern.
King Therid immediatley sent a large amount of miners and excavators ot his new mines and found that the veins were very deep and could be possibly mined for years without stopping. These two mines became known as the Kings mine and the Wrought mine and massive operations went underway, many dwarves brought their entire families through the portal and settles near the mines building homes and communties.
However like all good things the intial successes of the settled dwarves turned to hardship from an unlikely source, after 40 years of ease King Therid became engaged in warfare with a nearby kingdom of elves over land ownership and needed money to finance his wars and decied to tax the rich mines on Evelen, at frist the dwarves were understanding such is war but the king kept pressuring them for more ore at a less wage and accidents became frequent as safety was thrown aside for production.
This came to ahead in a suprising manner after 4 years of these hardships the king decreed that all males on Evelen not working as miners were to be rounded up and indoctrinated into the army, enough was enough as far as the miners were concerned they could accept being treatd as near slave labour but they would not tolerate their family being rounded up for a war they had little interest in.
On a fateful day the mines foremen told the dwarven soldiers that the mines had run dry and that was it, The king furious about the news sent his own experts and soldiers there to investigate this claim and to round up the miners for indocterination. What he did not know is the dwarves had been hording the ore and had built weapons and armour of their own and took the soldiers hostage demanding that the taxation be reduced and that the King resolve his petty disputes peacefully. The king reacted angrily and sent his soldiers in force to enforce his will, this became known as the war of the Boulders and continued on for 3 months the miners fought well and won some small battles however the well armed dwarven soldiers were too much for them and they pushed the miners inside the mines holding them there.
The King decided that he would resolve the matter personally thinking to himself that he had no time for any more of this nonsense and iussed an ultimatum that if they would not leave the mine peacefully he would collapse the mine and leave them to their fate. His own soldiers through loyal could not accept that the king would do such a thing and his advisors pleaded with him not to do so "I cannot let this treachory go unpunished". Eventually the dwarves of the Wrought mine surrendered feeling that enough blood had been spilled, this gave birth to resentment of the dwarves inside the kings mine who felt they had been betrayed.
Soon within weeks the dwarves inside the Kings mine surrendered, hungry, and tired and the king decreed that they would be sentenced to work the mines forever and that the "loyal" miners would oversee this.
For 6 years these dwarfs worked themselves into the grave, their hatred for their "betayers" became returned in full, however one day the prisoners pulling a vast amount of ore found that there was no portal for their load and took this as a sign and 6 years of hatred swelled up and burst forth the next 4 weeks became a massacre dwarf vs dwarf with no quarter given or asked.
The Wrought mine dwarves found themselves out numubered horribley and were forced to do the unthinkable , they hired an entire tribe of Orcs as "special" soldiers outfitting them with dwarven weapons and armour. This was an unthinkable act as far as the Kings mine dwarves thought but the Orcs forced the battle into a stalemate ensuring the Wrought mine dwarves survival, however this was not without cost the Orc chief Terrorfist slew the leader of the kings mine and took his place and so in a ironic twist of the Kings mine dwarves found themselves subjugated with little or chance of rescue.
Over the following years the Orcs would launch attacks against the other mine and the Wrought mine dwarves sought a way to escape even trying to make peace with their old enemy however some Wrought mine dwarves willingly follow the Orc "King" Terrorfist and the orcs and dwarves to some extent have built there own town filled with the worst excesses of both races.
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Jeeeeoker
Haggler
8/28/2009 5:04:53 PM
PostID: 301999
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It has a lot of ideas to work with and having 2 sides to the world opens up other possibilities for example the underside may not get much light and what would happen it the fragmanet landed on another plane
And how about those caught on the horizontal edge unsure of what lies up or down
It's actually shaped like a puzzle piece? I thought that was just a metaphor, and it was just as expansive as the universe we know, but happens to be drifting along an imperceptible 4th spatial dimension that interconnects at right angles to all other planes in existence (which happen to all be moving in parallel, as far as that 4th dimension is concerned, so they never collide with each other). It'd be sort of like a comet that orbits the sun at an irregular angle to the disc pattern that our planets use, except shifted up by one dimension.
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