In a way the number of posts and views of each thread speaks for themselves, but there might also be subjects that no one has yet though of (or, more likely, had time to flesh out) that others would appreciate.
So, what sort of material would YOU like to see more of?
Since I started this thread, I'll go first and I hope that many of you will post ideas and wished as well and hopefully inspire others to take action
- More NPCs: useful commoners and contacts, rulers, villains, other adventurers and employers
- Information that helps establish a 'feel' in the campaign: the little details, such as colourful descriptions of places, town and cities or even how the landscape changes with the seasons
- Ideas for events that take place around the PCs without actually involving them, thus making them feel that Mystara is 'alive'
- Details from daily life: what diseases plague the nations? what new inventions become famous? what takes place at religious holidays, festivals and tournaments? etc.
Others might wish to see more 0D&D -> 3E conversions, compiled lists of spells, monsters, feats, armies or more detailed info and background on some of the historical events? Let's hear your ideas!
:-) Jesper
I'd like to see:
1. More maps (naturally), but failing that text-based descriptions of towns and regions - even a couple of paragraphs can be incredibly useful.
2. More information to enhance the "feel" of the game, as Spellweaver puts it. There's been quite a lot of that here, as well as on the MML (witness my writeups of various books PCs can find and/or buy, as well as group mini-projects outlining local legends and such). This also includes perspectives on daily life in a given location.
3. More history. Mystaran official history has a lot of gaps in it, and I think that periods where nothing of significance happened (even on a local level) should be quite rare. I'm not saying we need earth-shattering events - even periods of minor civil uinrest, political changes, and social upheaval would qualify, and IMO are worthy of discussion. Furthermore, by expanding on history, new ideas for adventures, magic items, and other campaign hooks can easily arise.
4. More adventure ideas, or better yet, more adventures.
Geoff
Regards
Gary
Off the top of my head I like a mixture of fluff and crunch. So I like quite a lot of what's happening at the moment:
- The 3.5e converted creatures.
- DM's Immortal thread
- Thorf's maps.
NPC/City/Country descriptions/Gazeteers are also extremely useful, even, if they have no relevance to my current campaign.
Regards
Gary
I think the other thing I'd like to see is a development of the churches and cults some more, as in the way the Church of Karameikos and Church of Traladara are done in Gaz 1, with a basic belief structure, and also to see how the church is organized, descriptions of their dress, and their goals, etc.
Maybe, one day, when I get another PC and my courses are complete, I'll get to do some of this myself.
Maybe, one day, when I get another PC and my courses are complete, I'll get to do some of this myself.
Don't bet on it ;)
I handed in my thesis in August with an almost one-year delay, thinking that NOW I would finally find the time to do some more D&D Mystara writing, but no. So far, this autumn has been my least productive season yet
Real life, it seems, keep making unfair demands on my time...
:-) Jesper
NPC's and adventure plotlines also would be great for somebody like myself with very little time to design them from scratch.
A large global map would be great because there's many a time somebody talks about a region I've never heard of!
Completing this map and adding names might help. http://www.mystara.addr.com/maps/mystara/mystara_24m.png (warning, 2.4 MB file)
Since I am always open to suggestions and feedback and would like to see more people enjoying the stuff I write, I'd like to ask you to be more precise in what kind of NPCs you'd like to see and use.
Should it be villains? other heroes to cooperate and compete with? nobles, mayors and other "important" NPCs or just commoners with interesting traits, quirks and backgrounds?
Do you prefer "fluff" and to flesh out NPCs yourself or do you favour NPCs with complete stats and game info?
Should all NPCs be key individuals tied to specific adventure suggestions or do you have more use for "simple" NPCs that you can drop into any location with few modifications?
Hoping to hear from you,
:-) Jesper
I'm working on a Baddy that I've mentioned before. I've modified him a bit to make him more diabolical. Once complete, I'll be adding him to your list.
P.S.- I prefer fluff to comlete stats since I use different rules and would also like the NPC's to be flexible to be a chalenge to players of whatever level.
1- A complete conversion on all Mystara Races to 3.5.
2- A complete conversion on Mystara Immortals to 3.5.
3- A complete conversion on all Mystara classes/prestige classes to 3.5.
For starters, i think that should be enough!
Farmsizes, farming techniques, crop types, and the incomes drawn from them for every Mystaran Nation or at least Karameikos, her estates, and the free farms Using real world consumption needs, real world production yeilds, and some income calculations.
Considering the estate of Kelvin exports precious metal and imports grain, vegetable, and ivory and Specularum exports livestock which it brings in from the rest of the duchy of Karameikos just to feed the capital, We need to be sure that the populace of Karameikos are not dying from a continuous goverment induced famine.
Based on existing Agricultural calculations Karameikos is getting his income from the estates and their lords and Barons and is not contributing anything to the growth of Karameikos other than his mercenary army of occupation some twenty years deployed which is hold up in the Guild town of Specularum from which he plunders rent and Taxes. If someone waves a flag and says three cheers for good King Stephan, he deserves a knife in his back.
Sure you can wander about killing dragons for their horde, but that money came from somewhere. Usually it came from the Kings Tax Wagon being followed by a small army of troops.
We need real rules for estates and some decent values on the market price of produce or the poorest of peasants will continue to shell out 20gp per day for the firewood and food needed by people just to live.
I suspect that my approach to a solution is at a complete 180 from his - he wants to start with a set level of crop yields, productivity and prices, and sweep forward from there to get some sort of end result, I want to set final wages and living requirements at a reasonable level and work backwards from there to figure everything else out. And the two of us are apparently not meeting in the middle. But the same basic framework is there.
I love what people are doing here so far, but here are some more ideas:
- Maps, everyone loves maps, they could be regional, continental, city maps, country maps, dungeon maps, house/castle plans or whatever
- Immortals, religions and faiths
- Almanac style entries and mini-gazetteers
- discussions about cultures
- Alternative/modified Mystara settings
- NPCs
- Monsters
- New classes, feats, skills, Martial arts rules for any edition of D&D
- Mystara adaptions for other rules systems
- Economic musings, sure, but make sure its presented in a way so that people will understand their usefulness
Håvard
The idea is to somehow link map hexes in the "official maps" to text containing ideas about what can be found in that hex, simply to make information/ideas easily available and thereby provide the busy DM with a basis from which to improvise/describe the area to the players on the fly:
This text could contain:
What interesting locations can be found there (temples, hamlets, ruins, inns, etc.)
What interesting trade goods/resources can be found there (fur markets, gold mines, fish, herbs)
What adventures could start there
What NPCs can be found there
Maybe some statistics or categorization to give the DM a basis for improvising the place, yet keeping coherence. An example:
population:
none/semi-rural/sparse humanoids/rural/well populated/Human city/suburban/Elven wilderness
population category: wilderness/crossroads/travelled/borderlands/tradehub/etc/travelhub.
Natural Resources: Agriculture/mining (iron)/trapping
Industries: none/farming/blacksmithing/travel service (inns, horses)
Places of note: HQ of merchant house XX, temple of Ixion, etc.
Some kind of data sheet could be made, that interested people could simply fill out if they felt like fleshing out an area/region. This piece of work could then be seen as a link on the map in the hex(es) in question, that links to a description of the area.
just an idea, while bored at work
The Campaign Economics Handbook
A good place to start, for those who are interested, is the Harn roleplaying system. You can visit Columbia Games' Harn site here.
The level of detail in this gaming system is unequalled in anything that I have seen. One supplement of particular relevance in this case is their Harn Manor rules set, which allows GMs to design medieval manors, calculate their incomes, crop yields, and work out other details like the number of peasants, maids, cooks, groomsmen, and other servants working there. We used it in a campaign a few years ago, and from my perspective it seemed to work rather well. It could be a nice companion piece to standard D&D dominion rules.
Geoff
Since thorf has made this amazing map collection, one thing came to mind as a very useful tool for DMs who like a very open campaign and haven't got tons of spare time to write-up read-up on every fact about the known world.
The idea is to somehow link map hexes in the "official maps" to text containing ideas about what can be found in that hex, simply to make information/ideas easily available and thereby provide the busy DM with a basis from which to improvise/describe the area to the players on the fly:
This text could contain:
What interesting locations can be found there (temples, hamlets, ruins, inns, etc.)
What interesting trade goods/resources can be found there (fur markets, gold mines, fish, herbs)
What adventures could start there
What NPCs can be found there
Maybe some statistics or categorization to give the DM a basis for improvising the place, yet keeping coherence. An example:
population:
none/semi-rural/sparse humanoids/rural/well populated/Human city/suburban/Elven wilderness
population category: wilderness/crossroads/travelled/borderlands/tradehub/etc/travelhub.
Natural Resources: Agriculture/mining (iron)/trapping
Industries: none/farming/blacksmithing/travel service (inns, horses)
Places of note: HQ of merchant house XX, temple of Ixion, etc.
Some kind of data sheet could be made, that interested people could simply fill out if they felt like fleshing out an area/region. This piece of work could then be seen as a link on the map in the hex(es) in question, that links to a description of the area.
just an idea, while bored at work
I like this idea. I have tried to flesh out bits and pieces myself with inns, taverns, NPCs and plot devices posted here and at the Vault, but some kind of map with an indication of which areas have been "fleshed out" could provide a nice overview of where to campaign with lots of details available.
In fact, it would give a whole new meaning to "white parts of the map", litterally meaning areas the very few people have "visited" (in their imagination).
Nice symbolism!
:-) Jesper (also bored at work :D )