For anyone who doesn't know, I have been divorced from D&D for about 2 1/2 years, and since moving from the big city to Smallville about 10 months ago, I've had very little contact with the gaming community in general. So it came as a great surprise to me this past weekend to find that Paizo Publishing, formerly the home of Dungeon magazine and Dragon magazine, was building and distributing a new campaign world for D&D 3.5 called the Pathfinder RPG.

Again in case you don't know about it, it is a new world centering on the interactions of 5 socio/political/national factions in the aftermath of the collapse of a greater empire. Woven into this story is an organization called the Pathfinder Society. They seem to be a reason for adventurers of different stripes to act together, as well as having their own agenda.

What I find most fascinating about this situation is the irony. WotC decides to "fix" D&D (some might say in the veternary sense) and ceases support for the previous edition. This is pretty much SOP for them, based on the last transition. But because of the troublesome OGL, which some might suggest lead to the need to replace the system, a former publishing partner has the right to continue the support WotC is withholding. And thus a part of WotCs market strategy is foiled, the requirement of all who play D&D to buy upgrade(?) if they wish to purchase new material. This new game, coming as it does from Paizo, is as official as any new 3.5 products will be.

Incidentally, this new campaign is support very much in the way of Living Greyhawk and so forth. There is an online signup, you register your characters, play at approved events and receive points and such. Like an RPGA event. I was more than a little amazed. I knew that devotees of the previous system would continue to play that system, as had occured with 1st ed and 2nd ed before. Even 3.0 had people who didn't switch. But for this to all come together the way it has...it ust makes me smile. 

Tags: 3.5 D&D Irony

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When I started playing 28 years ago, my group kind of naturally gravitated to a concept that we didn't even know WAS a concept at the time; A Shared Game World. From what I have heard later, most GMs developed and ran a world of their own, that was exclusively their own, or they utilized a published game world. If they were running a published world, it was no big thing for one of the other players to decide they wanted to run, and just start an adventure in that published world, using characters that had been developed in someone elses game.

If you were running your own unique world, the idea of handing over control of it to someone else so they could run their own game was difficult, to say the least. My group came to this arrangement naturally. We were friends before gaming, and we trusted each other. Tunnels & Trolls was the game we started with, and at the time, while we knew of Trollworld and the continent of Ralph, there was really no material other than solos that we could use for games. So we designed our own. This proved to be an ideal arrangement for cooperation. We all had ideas about what we wanted to be in our world, and because we were friends we tried to see each other's point of view and accomodate each other's needs.

There really weren't any control issues, in part, I think, because we were all new, and none of us had any more experience than any other. We set up a general geography, and assigned areas of responsibility. Then each of us created our own dungeons. There was a very general shared mythology, which grew through play, incorporating the deeds of many of our characters. It was a very satisfying gestalt. After many years most of that group has given up gaming, or moved on to other games. I admit that I have also played many, many games in that time. But that first campaign remains my favorite. 

Tags: Campaign Shared T&t

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