In trying to come up with a D&D game concept, I found I kept getting hung up on the idea of adventurers travelling away from towns and cities to enter the wilds. Something didn't quite make sense to me about it. So, I'm thinking about reversing the idea.

My thought is that "civilization" has been reduced almost to the level of itinerant camps, struggling to survive. There are a few scattered nuggets of solidity here and there, like a fort, a monastery, a wizard school, etc., but the wilds are such that towns can't seem to build up around these, at least not for long.

There are cities - marvels of the ancient world, abandoned in some calamity, yet largely intact - but they're even more dangerous than the wilds, overrun by creatures  that have crept up from the sewers and dungeons, or have been corrupted by powerful evils who have taken over the city centers and the important buildings. Brave adventurers find their way in, and sometimes even back out, with treasures and knowledge left behind centuries ago. Sometimes a building or district can even be retaken for a time, allowing some members of the diaspora briefly to regain true civilization until the monstrous tide surges back in.

Now that I write it out, I guess it's sort of like the idea of retaking Khazad-dûm. Anyway, who's interested, and what would you add to the idea?

(Also, please no advice on the system. I like it, and I've run it successfully here before. Thanks.)

That sounds like a really cool concept I'd definitely be on board with playing.

Is the goal just to have dungeon-crawling fun in urban settings? Or to eventually have the players be able to affect change and maybe retake a city? Or something else?

In reply to mesneaky (msg # 3):

Depends how long the game kept up. Clearing, say, one major building, or a block of houses would probably involve more play than I've seen most games last through. But, yeah, if we stuck with it, the idea would be that people from the outside could start to make use of some of the cleared areas, with benefits for the players. Clear an old forge, and defenses can be set up. Clear a library and portals to locked areas can be opened.

It also depends what the players are interested in. I greatly prefer collaboration over just serving up my particular vision of things.

You posted an insightful reply on my question on this board, about the wealth and a community in the Forgotten Realms. I am happy to run something like this with you. I guess that the only thing I should mention beforehand is that I am way more invested in the writing than any mechanics or actual gameplay. I took your input and ended up applying it to a setting of my own device. But if you want to work on this, it's easier to accomplish together and it also provides a valuable sense of accountability with each other. Let me know :-)

I'm interested in some 4th edition. It's been a couple years, but I still know how to play.

This sounds like it has some serious potential -- especially if you come up with enough history. Heck, you could just take an established setting like the Forgotten Realms or Eberron and just wipe out all the settlements bigger than, say, "Large Town".

Thinking on this, Eberron would make a good fit. It already has support in the ruleset, and it's got a magical cataclysm that devastated an entire country -- just advance the timeline, and have that ruin spread worldwide. You'd have to decide how the Dragonmarked Houses and such would be affected, but you could just back up a few years from the established timeline and say that the effect of the Day of Mourning never stopped spreading.

Something you'd want to decide, regardless of setting or disaster, is how long ago it happened. Make it too recently, and long-lived races like elves and eladrin could claim to have been present before things went pear-shaped.

What if this catastrophe also removed everyone above a certain level -- either through some sort of power-related effect, or because they were all fighting something and lost? You could make it so that the only people living right now are in the Heroic tier (up to 10th level), and that anything regarding Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies have to be rediscovered. Just finding the knowledge of one's Path could be the end result of a quest that takes the group above 10th level.

Really, it sounds like you're taking the "Points of Light" concept they started with, and turning down the gamma correction. (Because, really, it never felt 'dark' enough.) Sign me up and I'll be happy to spew out conjecture and future ideas all day.

True. The entire region I have in mind, at least at first, is only about 50 miles in radius, so it could really exist in almost any established setting. If people really want to do that, we can, but I'm prepared to make it its own setting, in order to free us up to invent things.

It's the "deciding" of things like that that would give me pause. The players could help with that, but it's also easier just to set things in a blank slate, or so far in the past or future that none of the established organizations of civilization exist anymore.

I like Eberron, but it's got a pretty different approach from what I'm proposing.

It needn't have been a disaster, in the usual sense. Cities have been abandoned and lost in the real world, simply due to a decline in local civilization over time, perhaps with a few otherwise handleable crises to finish it off.

I don't think a lack of elvish, eladrin, warforged or deva witnesses would be too hard for bought-in players to explain. Or, perhaps there are members of those races who can directly recall brighter times; eladrin and deva do get a bonus to History checks, after all. Anyway two of the default assumptions in 4th Edition, even with the presence of long-lived core races, are The World Is Ancient and The World Is Mysterious, and I wasn't planning override those. They keep one's game from having to decide much in the way of long-term history.

One thing I like about 4th Edition is that only PCs have levels, really. NPCs have whatever the game calls for. But I do like the idea that one's destiny is literally to be found among the ashes of the ancients.

Yeah, even Dark Sun never seemed to really adopt the "Points of Light" approach. Maybe it was just tricky to convey anything between an established, stable city and an ancient ruin in the campaign material. "Woodbole is a bustling lumber town hoping to make it big supplying material to the major cities downstream. Here's a paragraph on its backstory. Which, by the way, is about all that's left of it by the time the PCs get there."

Thanks for the interest and enthusiasm. I'll plan to make up a game thread over the next week or so, and then put out the call.

I am definitely down.

This sounds like it has potential, consider me interested.

Also, what do you expect will be your anticipated post rate?

Sounds good to me engine! I look forward to the call for players!!!

I've posted a call for players:

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