More Applied Pragmatics

[bryant]

This is in fact the 4e campaign I'm gearing up to run. The campaign frame: the PCs are a group of three to five individuals who, for whatever reason, have hooked up together to apply to the course of education offered by Doctor Cavillard. You may have known each other beforehand; you may have met in an inn in Fairhaven and decided to band together on the spot. That'll all shake out in character creation.

I like a lot of things about Eberron. The things I like for this campaign are:

• The urban setting. Fairhaven is no Sharn, but it is a pretty cosmopolitan city. There will be adventure outside the city, but there will also be lots of adventure inside it.


• The conspiracy and intrigue. It is a very political setting. The Five Nations have just come out of a very long war, and they don't really get along no matter what treaty they signed. There will be both nobility and treachery afoot. Think Scarlet Pimpernel.


• The pulpishness. I like giving my players the chance to play big damn heros. Shake the pillars of the heavens, baby... maybe not at first level but characters will do things that matter in the end.

PCs will start at first level. I have at this point done the first half of the heroic tier a lot, so I intend to accelerate levels 1-5 as much as necessary to avoid boredom. If I wind up with players new to 4e, I'd make sure they had enough time to learn the system.

There'll be mix of combat and roleplay and skill challenges. On average, I'm thinking a fight or two per session. Some sessions may have none, some may have three. Battlemaps? Yep. Minis? Yep.

Weekends seem likely. Saturday morning, noonish? Four hours or so? Yeah. Weekday evenings are a possibility depending on commutes and such.

I like empowered players. I like players whose backgrounds offer up hooks and mysteries. I like players who want to define chunks of the world, particularly if they want to define them in ways that cause as many problems as not.

Comments

[mcroft.livejournal.com]

My goal with Amber is to make the players totally loathe recurring villains that they can't kill because the villain is also their best friend's Mother.

If your villain is not someone's mother, you're missing out on a key dilemma.