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So you’ve been reading about gaming on the wave. You’re excited to try it out, to become involved with this grand experiment. All you need is an invite.
But here’s the thing: Like real-life, there are a lot of potential gamers but very few GMs. I am excited at the response as one of the “first generation” of gamemasters on the wave, but I can’t help but think…we need more games. People want to play, but few people are actually running games. I’d love to run twenty games for everyone, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.
So here it is, a contest:
Pitch a 4e game you want to run in the comments below. I have two invites (one of my own, and one pledged by the charitable and awesome JesterOC). We will look at the best pitches and select the two people with the coolest pitches to receive an invite.
UPDATE: We have four five invites available, so we can have four winners! Thanks to Quinn Conklin and the fine folks over at Softrope ! Also, Critical Hits has pledged another!
Once your invite comes through, we’ll get you set up on a wave with instructions on how to get adjusted, and start up a GM’s “support wave” where we can discuss ideas and implementation. We’ll ensure that you have players. And then you are free to run a great game on the next big thing in terms of platforms.
The contest will run until Friday, November 6th with winner’s announced on Tuesday, November 10th.
UPDATE: Thanks to everyone who’s entered thus far, but due to some new pledges and interest, we want to extend the contest just a little longer. Wednesday, November 11th is the last day to submit and Friday, November 15th is the announcement day.
Keep your pitches brief! Preferably a pitch will be 100 words or less. Wow us with the high level concept, don’t give us every detail. And remember: 4e DnD is the game. This won’t be the thread to pitch your Gumshoe game (though I love it so).
So You Think You Can Judge?
Do you also want to see more games on wave? You can help by pledging an invite. If you’re interested, please use the ‘Contact Us’ form on the site and pledge an invite! We’ll open up one more potential winner with each invite. More games equals more choice equals more fun. We appreciate your help!
Already on the Wave and Want to Run a Game?
You might be on the Wave and already thinking about doing this yourself. We don’t want to leave you out. The plan is to make a support wave where we can give you any info or tips to get a game started and run. Use the Contact Us form and drop us your wave address and we’ll get a hold of you.
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A Jack of All Trades ,or if you prefer, an extreme example of multi-classing, Gamefiend, a.k.a Quinn Murphy has been discussing, playing and designing games straight out of the womb. He is the owner and Editor-in-Chief of this site in addition to being an aspiring game designer. As you would assume, he is a huge fan of 4e.
By day he is a technologist.
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The Skill Challenge Delve. Following the Dungeon Delve model of three-encounter adventures, the Skill Challenge Delve offers the opportunity for the players to provide rich, cinematic description in an environment of shared narrative control. Both success and failure will drive the story forward – and story there will be, despite the connotations of the “Delve” concept. So, whip up your favorite character concept, take another look at the Skill Focus feats, and climb aboard this brief but exciting ride during which you will have a turn at the wheel.
Sweet! I have been itching to see what 4e is like on Wave. Here’s my pitch for The Twilight War:
Set in the paragon tier, level 17. While there will be a healthy dose of combat, the story is geared towards intrigue and mystery. Are you interested?
This sounds awesome! Though I’d love to play with wave and I do enjoy running 4e, I’m a little too busy to take on another game at the moment. But I’ll be interested to see where this goes.
This sounds super exciting. My pitch is pretty simple, actually.
What I’d like to do is walk a group through the published adventures of Wizards of the Coast. Starting with Kobold Hall from the DMG and ending with Prince of Undeath, the adventurers will be part of a long-disbanded guild known as the Forgotten Knights.
The pitch (for a 9th level game): An adventuring company of rising renown stays the night in the sleepy village of Willowbrook. The locals throw an extravagant feast, celebrating their arrival, with drink, food, song and dance. A merry time is had by all. When the adventurers rise from their slumber, the local magister asks these grand heroes to help Willowbrook with a little goblin problem they’ve been having. After such a lovely feast, how can they refuse?
But what is up with the goblins, that they would be a threat to so tough an adventuring party? Why does their chieftan Boggorok only emerge at night? And why has young Reginald been hearing fey voices in his dreams?
Softrope.net would like to offer up a spare invite to encourage more DMs onto the Wave.
I have a Wave account and would like to join/sit in on a game – at least to see how it’s run, if I can’t play. Once I have a better idea of how things work in real-time, I’d be more inclined a game myself.
Perhaps a wave dedicated to training GM’s . . . ? Just a thought.
How do I ping someone within Wave that I don’t already have listed as a contact?
I’ve already got a Wave account, so no need for an invite. I’d be willing to run a 4e Wave game though. If I had it my way, I would run a 4e setting based on ancient China, about a decade before the forming of the Qin dynasty. It would be pseudo historical, using real events and places with the addition of magic items and mystical powers.
But, if people really want to run something else. I’m open to that too.
Planescape 4e
Initial plan is playing the classic mega-modules (starting with Infinite Staircase and Modron March – continuing beyond those if there’s interest).
However, there is so much there, that I’m happy with ditching those plans for what interests the players – from a grand tour of the planes to dealing with Faction politics.
Having been the webmaster of Planewalker.com back when it was officially sanctioned by WotC and getting modrons into Dragon magazine, I’m obviously really jazzed by the setting and am trying to get a 4e game going that still captures the original Planescape feel (though with less Cant).
I would really like to get in on a 4e Wave game while getting to know the platform with the hopes of running a 2 part game there in the near future. Here is the setting (more on the “2 part” afterwards)
Now, I would actually like to run 2 games simultaneously within the same setting. One game would be a “Good” game, the other an “Evil” game. Each party would not interact with each other at any point in time during the campaign but their choices could effect the happenings within both games. If the “Good” players take a mission and end up killing the street gang’s leader, the “Evil” players could lose said NPC as a possible informational contact. Likewise, if the “Evil” players set fire to the fields, the “Good” players could be called in to help extinguish the flames.
I have always wanted to run a campaign like this before but never had the means (time, place, different players for the different games) or opportunity (time again) until now – with Wave.
Neither party would be allowed (honor system here) to look at the other party’s maps or story until after the campaign was finished. Can you imagine reading the story later and finding out the reason you couldn’t save Timmy from the well is because a PC in the other game decided to use chains instead of rope and Timmy couldn’t cut himself free? Ok, that’s maybe a little harsh, but you get the idea
I would like to take advantage of GWave’s persistence to run a simultaneous campaign in all three tiers. The PCs would be pulp heroes (ala Elric, Fafhrd, Conan) with destinies / dooms weighing upon them.
The following three plots would unfold simultaneously:
The players swear service to the king’s own, a once-proud military company whose conscripts once numbered from every duchy in the land. Since Nera’s death at the hands of the Gnoll King’s Hordes, fewer and fewer are sent to patrol the king’s roads or guard the great western wall. Corruption is discovered among feuding nobility. The machinations of sinister cult may be responsible. An invading githyanki advance force is discovered beyond the wall and the PCs must rally what ragtag troops they can and defend the realm. (One Bad Egg’s Hard Boiled Armies will be used for mass combat)
Meanwhile…
The Paragon tier players, seeking the origin of the mysterious army and its connection to the cult, journey into the Underdark and follow a portal to Gearwich the Clockwork City (Sigil w/o serial #s). There they discover how deep the cult’s machinations run. In order to prevent the formation of this cult (that betrayed Nera to the Gnoll King and let the westwall fall into decay), they charter a spelljammer and follow a series of ancient clues to a portal that leads them back to Bael Turath. There, they must seek out and close the mysterious portal through which the illithid agents have been arriving.
All the while, the Epic Heroes, wearied with this ceaseless warring, take the fight to the Illithid. A fleet of pirates is rallied in the astral sea, and sailed through the Mouth of Storm, to fight the Illithid Armada in its home sky, above a dying star at the end of time. War is brought to the sleeping Aboleth God-King and his Illithid Legions. The heroes storm through the innards of the Ur-Aboleth, seeking to prevent the Illithid Soul Furnace from engaging. Should they fail the entire Illithid Empire will arrive before history, and all the races of the realm will be enslaved. Should they succeed, they maroon the Illithids and their Gith soldiers at the end of time, to perish slowly under a dying sun.
Oh, I like some of these ideas. Especially the 3 tiers simultaneously one. GWave might make that far more manageable than you could with face to face and I’m all for shaking up the standard narrative of campaigns.
Also, if we can throw a second idea into the ring there is an adventure series I am working on for possible publication (self pub) and I tend to create best actually playing through an adventure. Plus it might be fun experiment to openly develop it on GWave.
[Trailer voice guy]In a world pulled into a realm of madness and destruction, those who survive maintain their reality at any cost.[/Trailer voice guy]
Basically, a world was pulled into a Far Realm-ish plane (less tentacles and random madness, more “your planet is just a few chunks of rock and you have to animate the dead as your army”) and for 100 years they have struggled to survive as the world disintegrates around them. Even death is no release as the corpses are animated to fight the foulspawn armies at the Conflagration forever burning in the distance, and the spirits are trapped as glowing shapes slowly fading to nothing unless a mortal bonds with it. Fresh “recruits” are pulled into the plane to help defend the remnants of civilization (so the PCs can be from anywhere or originate as survivors here), but with no way to return home…yet.
Thanks – I think the simultaneous play as well as agreed-on-in-advance plot points would really shift the focus of the game. You lose a lot of the surprise and suspense of do-I-die-or-not, but the game becomes about how these heroes get to their destinations – what they give up or lose along the way, &c.
Here’s my pitch: I’d take the players on a tour of the new Forgotten Realms scenery, picking several spots i think would be the most interesting ones and making site-based adventures. The first one would certainly be on the newly freed Myth Drannor, where they would have to help with the activation of the Mythal, finding themselves travelling back and forth the city’s history in order to be able to do that.
The campaign that I run for land based creatures I call friends started with all of players migrating to a once great city that was destroyed by a great flood and is now rebuilding itself. In my home campaign thats the city state of Mulmaster which was the most recent home of the Zhentarim.
I only used that device and that campaign actually centers around troubles they encounter on the way. I would still like to do something with the idea of people trying to rebuild this city and the problems that come along with it. Especially as corrupt/evil organizations strive to dominate in the area.
Basically a Deadwood meets Thieves Guild
So far I only see 9 posts for the contest giving my idea a 40% chance on numbers alone! It boggles my mind, I would have thought many more would clawing at this contest. Thank you for putting it on and thanks to those who donated more invites.
Here is my planned game idea:
The outer lands where the heroes call their home was a terrible savage land of brutal warring tribes. Our heroes fought for the ruling baron to bring peace to the outer lands and were victorious. The king has heard of the exploits of the heroes and requested they meet with him.
Freshly into the paragon tier, the heroes who brought peace to the outer lands now have the even tougher challenge of serving the King. They are charged with the task of finding a suspected spy in the King’s council of advisers. While uncovering plots, they stumble upon a strange cult who seem to want more than just to usurp the King. What does the ritual they are discussing do, and why does it need the waste material from the nation’s smelting operations? Finding the truth while battling the odd minions of the cult will prove no easy task. However this will pale in comparison as the game continues and they must race against the clock to stop an event that will destroy the country and threaten the entire world.
Using Wave each player will have his own investigation, contacts, and side stories. But they’ll have a main area to converse using in game “sending ritual stones” and “quick transport” to meet up in case they need to battle. As one player gets information from their contacts they can pass it on themselves to the rest of the party. I plan on giving visual clues, “item cards”, and hopefully a Google maps driven overlay for the areas covered.
As with all my campaigns, I will hope players will add to my story lines and grow the game so that we all have fun playing.
Thanks for your consideration, and the chance to use this powerful new tool to play my favorite game.
Got an invite from a classmate, so go ahead and drop me out of the competition. However, if I was at least a contender, I’m curious which idea people might be interested in (not sure about posting both to the Wave-borne RPGs index in the off chance there’s interest in both which I don’t have time for at the moment).
Ken, you could always ask potential player in the Index’s related Discussion wave to find out which one is more popular. Harness the medium itself!
I’m already on Google Wave, but I’ve been looking for a game to join for some time now. I’m interested in seeing how this all plays out online.
Ken – Planescape 4e on Google Wave sounds epic. Drop me a line.
Anyone wanna get a group together?
Breath of Heroes (cont.)
As the players are sent forth from Diar, they discover that darker forces than mere barbarians are behind the attacks. Diar must stand alone, as it always has done, while the heroes try to unite the Free Cities against the darkness. Diar must surely fall, but it will buy them the time they need if they are to overcome the mutual mistrust and fear of betrayal that all city-rulers share.
Even if they can achieve this, they must still find out what evil power has raised the barbarian clans before their armies march forth…
Er… That’s not good… It seems that part two of my game idea got approved without part one…
I just got an invite from a Lifehacker donation thread. Thanks for running the contest. Any chance you can get players for me?
Breath of Heroes
(this was originally part one)
The city of Diar sits alone in the Western wastes, a single bastion of civilisation behind thick walls that nomadic tribes have spent their forces against time and time again.
Well, I rather doubt that I was going to be selected. There were a lot of really sweet game ideas. At any rate, I’m posting to let you know not to select me, even if I had won. I managed to secure a Google Wave invite elsewhere, after much struggle. I’d still appreciate help with DMing on the Wave, but I doubt that’ll be a problem.
Finally, now that I have invites to give, I’d like to go ahead and pledge one of my own. That should put us at six.
-a
Did you mean “Friday, November 13th is the announcement day”?
It is great to hear about all these people getting invites. On one hand it means there will be lots of games to play! On another hand it means I have a better chance at winning here
Hmmm… How about a Ravenloft campaign?
The characters start in Mordent where the curator of The Museum of the University of Mordentshire has vanished and the vaults of the museum raided. Who did it and what was he looking for? For what purpose? Is it true cursed relics were stored beneath the museum? Are any of them still there? And if so, what happens now that they are unguarded? Is the gossip of the old eccentric curator finally loosing his mind to old age accurate? Is this just the first of a chain of dire events?