Category: Ashes of Athas

4th Edition D&D: Still Much More to Do #DnD #RPG #TTRPG #4e #WotC

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A Little Context for This Post

I love 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons (“4e“). If you don’t, that’s fine, but did, and I still do. During the 4e days, which I consider the best years for organized play, I was one of the primary organizers for Gamers Syndicate game days in the DC area. We organized Living Forgotten Realms games at as many as five sites a month on as many as every weekend each of those months. We also ran D&D Encounters on the weekdays. We got a little time off, but not much. As a result of my efforts, and the rather generous rewards program offered by Wizards of the Coast (“WotC“) that you’ll never see again, I received a lot of free product, so there were very few publications I don’t own. I own multiple copies for many, and some are still in the original wrapping to this day (e.g., the Dungeon Command Sting of Lolth package; several game day, D&D Encounters, and Ashes of Athas adventures). Needless to say, I’ve seen a lot of game play and, you’d think, I’d see it all. Well, nope.

A Little More Context for This Post

In September of 2023, I started hosting 4e games at my house (which I bought primarily so I could easily host games on my own terms). The other primary organizer of the game days I mentioned (Vic) and I created a game world and cosmology (largely based on his own game world), and are serving as alternating DMs for the campaign. Because of how seldom we meet, Vic is only now finishing up his first leg of the campaign, so I’m about to start my first leg at level 4. In preparation for the whole thing, I’ve been cleaning up, and adding to, the Masterplan campaign manager, which we use for running the games. (I know I just said I haven’t had my chance to DM yet, but I’ve had the chance to run my 4e delves based on classic 1st Edition adventures.) I’ve added several libraries for sourcebooks that aren’t part of the base Masterplan product because the author gave up on the project before those sourcebooks were released. At the moment, I’m adding the Dark Sun Creature Catalog library to it. By my count, there are 11 more publications I need to add to get the Masterplan files complete. That said, even when I do, I’ll still have to go back to the existing libraries to continue to clean them up. All my work is available here.

And Finally, My Point

When 5th Edition was announced, I had a conversation with a friend. We both agreed that 4e was ending too soon because there was too much we hadn’t yet done. As gamers plugged into organized play, we knew that we’d be moving on to the next system, and if we didn’t, we’d have no one with whom to play because we knew our gaming friends would be. As I mentioned, I’m currently entering creatures from the Dark Sun Creature Catalog into Masterplan. Despite having played in two 4e Dark Sun campaigns during the 4e days, I’m still running into monsters and other material that I’ve never even heard of, and it reminds me of the conversation. Note well that I never played 2nd Edition due to the Satanic Panic, so I imagine anyone that played it would at least have heard of those creatures, but a lot of this material is still new to me, and not just the Dark Sun material. There was just a ton of material that I never got to use. Some of my Shadowfell materials are among those still unopened.

If this sounds like I’m complaining, I’m really not. Despite WotC moving on from 4e relatively quickly, I still have a ton of material from which to draw. Guys like Rob Schwalb and Stephen Radney-McFarland had their dirty little hands all over that edition, so it’s no surprise that the things I’m discovering are really clever and interesting.

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New Living Campaign for #4e #Dungeons & #Dragons #DnD #RPG #GenCon CC: @Erik_Nowak @Luddite_Vic

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Information has slowly been swirling through or local Washington, DC gaming community, and to a lesser extent, beyond that. The Gamers’ Syndicate has put synDCon on hold and is focusing its efforts instead on something that you can enjoy all year round: A living campaign for 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. Many 4e players feel that there’s still more to do with 4e, just as 3rd Edition players felt there was more to do with 3e, and we’re seeking to give 4e players that same opportunity that Paizo gave the 3e players with Pathfinder and, more to the point, Pathfinder Society.

Living Campaign

For those of you that don’t know what a “living campaign” is, I point you to the Wikipedia entry, because Wikipedia never lies. Actually, “living campaign” is often defined differently by different people. To me, the most important aspect of a living campaign is allowing all of us to meet each other. In other words, it grows the role-playing game community; however, there are other important aspects to it. It allows the players to shape the campaign world even though their playing pre-written adventures. That is, if the majority of players accomplished a task in one adventure, that fact will be tracked by the authors and shape how future adventures are written. What the players do matters, even though they’re sharing the experience with thousands of players worldwide.

The Campaign Setting

Every campaign needs a campaign setting: a world that needs protecting and sometimes saving. Some famous examples of Dungeons & Dragons campaign settings include Ed Greenwood’s Forgotten Realms, Keith Baker’s Eberron, and Gary Gygax’s (everyone bow, right now!) Greyhawk. Our campaign setting hasn’t yet been named, but it’s one of our own design, spearheaded by the devious mind of Erik Nowak (who, if you recall, brought us Rotting Toes). Erik premiered the first two adventures (co-written by Dave Phillips) for this campaign setting at synDCon I and synDCon II. The setting is high fantasy, but not quite that high. Characters will use inherent bonuses so that acquiring magic items won’t be critical, and when they are acquired, they’ll be special.

We’re also introducing a mechanic for tracking a character’s reputation in the kingdom, and have a fairly ambitious plan in the works, but those are topics for later posts.

GenCon 2013

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ll be running the two introductory adventures at GenCon this year, which serves as a sneak preview of the campaign. However, we’re working on the first four adventures, so we’re on track for an official start not too far in the future. Stay tuned.

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