Moving on…

So Altaera has moved.

Well, I initially got started last year with a blog. I really didn’t keep that up too well. As I’ve always said though, it’s not because I haven’t been thinking about a campaign.  I think it hurt (in a good way) that I’ve started playing in a new 4E campaign.  I’ve started writing recaps of those sessions (in character as Poe) and frankly, getting one of those out each month is sometimes challenging.

Anyway, about the move.  I’ve moved to a new home that allows me to directly post Google Docs – something I like because it makes it simple for me to maintain and update longer documents (like for instance, a world history or campaign primer…) while sharing them for comments. Everything also stays in a format that I can easily pull down to my own PC should I decide to take my ball and go somewhere else. This solves one of my main gripes about an otherwise very cool site, Obsidian Portal.

So that’s it.  Off to  Blogger…where this is being cross-posted and where I have plans to take a new tact in getting a new campaign world off the ground…with a little help from my friends.

And in case it isn’t obvious…all of my future blogging about D&D will take place in the new place…so update your links if you’ve got any…

Everything old is…

new to you.  I realized the other day that I had a lot of material and ideas for the old Taera campaign that never saw the light of day.  Being lazy generally and looking to minimize my preparation time I thought this could be put to use.  Why not make Altaerra == Taera?

The events from the Taera campaign could easily be worked into the history of Altaerra – who wouldn’t want to read about their character’s exploits in the history of the “new” world? – and what little history of Taera was revealed in play could also be reused.  All of the maps and other background information I never worked into the campaign will easily transition to the new campaign as well.  Or not – if it didn’t make it the first time, maybe I don’t even need it the second time around…

Obviously there’ll be some tweaking to maintain consistency with the previous campaign and probably to fit things better with the 4E rules. I’d also plan to advance the timeline a bit (ok, probably a lot) from the end of the last campaign.  That will allow some flexibility to build a different feeling campaign – probably with less focus on undead – while retaining some of the familiarity from the original.

Anyway, I’m heavily leaning towards this plan.  Let me know if you hate it in the comments…

I’ve been found out…

Yes, I did set up a site for Altaerra at a very cool looking Web portal Obsidian Portal. John K. is using the site to run his Moonsong City campaign and so far it seems to be working (well, heck it’s only been one session but it seems cool…). There’s nothing there yet…as I chose to go the blog route instead of the Wiki route. That may have been a mistake. We’ll see. Anyway, I mention this because Lou found me out and favorited me there (that sounds soooo Web 2.0 of me, doesn’t it?). I don’t want to maintain two sources of information, so I may have a decision to make before too long here…

To 4E or not to 4E, reprise…

So, I’m still struggling to get things posted to this site. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been thinking about it though. Of course, having a chance to be a player in a new 4E campaign (run by my good friend and a great DM, John K.) is proving to be a distraction. In a good way though.

At any rate, I have some things in the works, and having now read 4E and getting a chance to play it will probably need to make a call on whether that should be the system for this campaign. Having made the investment (and having everyone who’d likely be a player in this campaign do the same) it is looking more likely. We’ll see how it plays over the next few months but I have to admit that although it is definitely a different game it did seem to play well. If it proves to be easy to DM (I’ll be bugging John for his impressions of that, especially prep time…) as well it’ll probably be a winner. So, as more things get posted, you’ll probably see a slant towards 4E. Hopefully, that’s Ok with you potential players out there…

Primer: Introduction, part 2

Recorded human history on Altaerra generally picks up from the second generation after the Sacrifice. The first generation of the survivors and their immediate offspring were too busy fighting for their very survival to have the time or inclination to record much.  The Primer, like the scholarly works from Altaerra that it draws upon as its major sources, contains very little detail about these years.  What it does contain is a copy of the writings of Zane Archibald.

Zane was the grandson of Jonas Archibald, one of the original survivors of the crashed GASA mission.  Bedridden due to a disease that gradually weakened his limbs and eventually killed him, Zane spent weeks recording his life story and his remembrances of his grandfather’s tales of Earth and the years immediately following the Sacrifice. Zane’s writings, preserved at the library in Chaycia, are the sole surviving record of the earliest days of humanity’s existence on Altaerra and the only written records of Earth that the humans on Altaerra were able to maintain.

Primer: Introduction, part 1

Based on Consortium research, it is believed that nearly all of the GASA ship’s electronic records were lost in the sacrifice. As a result, the survivors were left to reconstruct from their memories any knowledge and history they could. It is unsurprising that, faced with a battle simply to survive, only things of a very practical bent were immediately recorded. Most of the rest was quickly lost. It didn’t help that technology of most sorts – especially the complex, miniaturized electronics that modern man relies so heavily on – failed fast in the chaos inducing fey of Altaerra.

Stories and legends of the ship, and earth survived for the first few generations but after that were soon the province of only the most learned and of fairy tales. Still, the legacy of Earth thought and pricinples can be
seen in much of the human society on Altaerra. Perhaps that’s why it feels so familiar to most actors and why they find it easy to fit in.

The Altaerran Consortium’s Primer

The Altaerran Consortium carefully trains all actors it sends to Altaerra so that they fit seamlessly into whatever Altaerran society or culture has been chosen for their background. This training includes a crash course on human history on Altaerra dating from the time of the initial human arrival on the planet. This history has been gleaned from the records put down by the descendants of the survivors themselves as discovered and researched by various actors in the Consortium’s employ and recorded in what actors commonly refer to as the “primer”.   All actors who successfully navigate the Consortium’s education center and end up on Altaerra are intimately familiar with all of the information in the Primer.

Where has the time gone?

So if I’d been sticking to my goal of posting 1 time per week there’d be 21 posts here by now.  Clearly, I haven’t been getting it done.  Luckily, this was a self-imposed deadline so there are little or no repercussions (aside from the feeling of inadequacy…).  Luckier still, I’m not yet trying to actually run a game – if that were the case we’d either be having crappy sessions or I’d have become the best improvisational DM ever.

Well, here’s me trying to get back on track.  I still want to run a game next year and will be trying to catch up over the next couple of weeks with multiple posts per week…not including this one of course.

You got your sci-fi in my fantasy…

Christian raised a good point in the comments to my post describing the Everret Effect:

“I like this idea for a sci-fi game, not sure how it would fit in with a D&D world.”

As I responded there, he’s got a point. Here’s my attempt to clarify what I’m trying to accomplish with this and how all of this sci-fi background will fit into a D&D campaign.

The scifi campaign world I’m describing will serve as a shell for the actual D&D campaign world. I intend for 90% of the action and background in the campaign to take place and be created for the fantasy world of Altaerra. The remaining 10% – mainly set up for adventures and general background along the lines of what I’ve started posting – will take place on or detail the future Earth.

So what’s the point of going to the extra effort to create the sci-fi “wrapper” to Altaerra? The primary reason is to try to make my job as DM easier. It’s pretty common for players to miss sessions, or have to leave early or arrive late. In the first season or two of the Taera campaign I dealt with this using the Pale Queen. Unexplained and sudden absences of a character due to a missing player were easily written into the current plot line by having the Queen show up and pluck the character out of the scene to fulfill a “special assignment”. No muss, no fuss. As an added bonus, the Queen also provided a ready made reason for the characters to be adventuring together.

In later seasons, after the Pale Queen was taken out of the picture, I found that coming up with explanations for suddenly missing characters a little more difficult – especially when players had to cancel at the last minute. I have never been fond of running someone else’s character while trying to DM and am equally reluctant to have another player take that on. The plan for the Altaerra campaign is to have the Everret Effect and the future Earth serve in the role of the Pale Queen. On the future Earth, the group will have a “director” or “producer” who is responsible for orchestrating their adventures on Altaerra and then marketing their escapades to eager fans back on earth. This producer will occasionally need to pull a character out of Altaerra for one reason or another – perhaps to do some marketing appearrances, or because of a family emergency back home, or to make things more dramatic or even simply for some R&R (perhaps mandated by the “players union”). Plus there’s always the chance that some piece of the character’s tuner malfunctions, briefly kicking them back to Earth. Because of the way time passes differently between Altaerra and earth (more on that in a future post…) and the inherent uncertainty built in to returning someone to Altaerra a character can be pulled back to Earth briefly and returned much later in game time without having to account for all of the missing time.

More 4E discussion…

I haven’t had time to read through the discussions he linked to yet, but here’s an interesting discussion on the upcoming 4E release from the Chatty DM…