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…

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…

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…

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.

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.

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…

By which I mean tying things tightly together, rooting game rules being used in the campaign’s environment (i.e., world) and theme and yes limiting the rules being used to those that have been “vetted” and integrated completely into the campaign. Why do this? Well, several reasons:

1. Maintain a cohesive campaign environment.
So, for example (and really – this is simply an example – I haven’t gotten to the point yet where anything like this has been decided…) if no monastic tradition exists on Altaerra then sadly there will be no monk class available. The goal is to make sure things “hang together well”. Nothing should feel shoehorned in just because some cool new feat that the DM liked came out halfway through the campaign.

2. Limit preparation work and complexity.
With limited time to prep for obvious reasons (sorry – cheap excuse to link to a picture of Lila…), I’ll need to focus my preparation time as much as possible. Having a limited number of source books to have to understand during the process will help. Limited options will also make it easier for me to guage the difficulty of encounters I’m preparing and hopefully making them less likely to be overkill or simply complete push overs because I failed to note the single weakness or subtle strength of a new class, feat, or spell.

3. Simplify things at the gaming table.
Mainly for the DM but also for everyone else. How do the new powers rally work? How do they stack? Etc. The core rules typically undego extensive playtesting. I’m not sure the add on’s always do…

Unlike my first campaign – Taera – in which I explicitly stated that “all the variety of DnD could be found just alittle modified” (check quote), Altaerra will have limitations and choices. Hopefully this will make for a better experience.

In future posts I’ll expand upon this topic, explaining and exploring how I plan to apply this concept in the following areas:

Classes
Races
Feats
Spells and magic
Religions
Skills

As always, let me know your thoughts on this. – are limits something you can live with? What makes them palatable? Do they take all the fun out of the game?

That really is the question…as posed by John K. in response to my first post.

I confess I don’t know a whole lot about the plans for 4E, I’ve spent a little time reading about it online, mainly here. There’s a lot for me to catch up on.  From the little I do know there are pro’s and con’s to moving or staying with 3.5.  Here’s my preliminary list:

Moving to 4E:

• New system claims to make it easier to prep and run a game
• Everyone’s on the same page with new rules
• Not as many “optional” rules and things to have to deal with (easier to limit to core books only…)
• Electronic support directly from Wizards (DnD Insider) (not sure how much we’ll have to pay for this though…)
• The excitement of playing a new system may suck us in again…

Staying with 3.5E:

• We already own the books – nothing new to buy
• No need to learn new rules, learn the new pitfalls
• Existing material for adventures, plenty of third-party stuff out there, etc. should make prep easier
• New rules may not support the kind of campaign I’m planning on running (magic rules in particular)

Hmmm…my sticking with 3.5 list isn’t quite as long (nor as convincing in my mind) as the  Moving to 4E list.  Wonder what that says.   Add your thoughts in the comments…

The original thought was that it was marketing guy’s play on “Alternate Terra”. Hence the added tag line “Are you ready to be a player?” – clearly I’ve been spending too much time with those marketing folks…

As you surely noticed, the spelling is also reminiscent of the old Taera campaign (I guess it’s hard to let go…). Let’s just say I like to keep my options open.

But I’m getting ahead of myself and not really answering the question…what is Altaerra. The involvement of a marketing guy (fictional or otherwise) in the naming isn’t coincidental. The core concept behind Altaerra is that of an alternate earth-type planet. Imagine if the world of World of Warcraft were a real place. Imagine if “players” were actually actors (the old definition of player) sent to this world to (as Matthew Woodring Stover, author of Heroes Die, from whom this concept is blatantly ripped off, says), “die in interesting ways”. Now imagine if the thoughts and actions of these players were recorded and broadcast to an eager world as the ultimate form of reality TV – brutal entertainment for a slightly dystopian future Earth. Imagine that a MMORPG based on the alternate world has taken the internet by storm – largely because of a whisper campaign that claims “if you’re good enough, you too can be a player…”. Now imagine that you are such a player…having been selected as a teen, educated in Altaerran history and culture, trained as a fighter or rogue or to access that strange altaerran force known as the fey, and finally transferred to Altaerra through an Everett Shift (to be more fully defined in upcoming posts…) to find yourself at last in a fantastical world of elves, dragons and orcs.

Clearly, there’s lots left to be fleshed out with this core concept but I think this captures the core idea. In future posts I plan to expand on (among other things…)

• the history of Altaerra…
• who lives on Altaerra and how they got there…
• how Altaerran history is intertwined with the future of this world…
• just what the Everett effect is and how it works…
• how and why I think this concept will help manage some of the meta game issues we ran into in the Taera campaign…

That’s just a preliminary list….For now, I welcome your comments – let me know what you think – intrigued? Bored? Think it’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever heard? Now’s the time to let me know…

At least that’s what I’d say if this were a movie trailer…

Here’s the scoop. After a long run as DM of the Taera Campaign (see also here and here) I ended the campaign this fall and took a break for the birth of my daughter, Lila. Well, the itch to DM hasn’t gone away but as many of you know with a <1 year old around the time to really do it well is scarce. So, I’ve come up with a plan…

I’m going to use the next year to craft as much of the campaign as I can – build the campaign world, plan the campaign arc, learn tricks to make my preparation go faster and the sessions run smoother, etc. The goal will be to launch the new campaign after the holidays next winter.

So what’s this all about you ask? Why a blog? Well, since as Christian always describes it, what we will be doing is basically shared story telling I hope to enlist your help in building the campaign world. That means adding your ideas to the world, suggesting house rules, commenting on the world’s history and make up, providing direction for what kind of campaign you’d like to participate in. Making all this public has the added benefit that if I start slipping you can keep me on track.

My goal is to post at least once a week. (Although, preferably that would be 2-3 or more times a week.) I’m hoping the blog posts will become something that you comment on so that I can roll your feedback into what I’m developing. Longer term, the posts will serve as a way to record the campaign design, house rules and timeline (for what we use to use as session recaps, etc.).

So that’s it for now. Let me know what you think in the comments…