Greetings from The Piazza

Summary:

Hello from The Piazza: Home of forums for multiple Dungeons & Dragons worlds, including Nentir Vale.

Greetings from The Piazza

Big Mac 07 Apr 2012 16:44

Hi,

I'm David "Big Mac" Shepheard, and I'm one of the global moderators at The Piazza.

The Piazza is a set of forums that were set up after Wizards of the Coast merged the forums for out of print D&D campaign settings into a single forum. The Piazza is both edition neutral and setting neutral (so we are happy to see people playing D&D in all of its forms). The forums we host have grown beyond its original goal of replacing the forums that got merged and we now even have some forums for non-D&D campaign settings (like Talislanta and Traveller).

A while ago, we launched our Nentir Vale forum and we have been collecting useful links for Nentir Vale GMs. I spotted your campaign website today, and you just got added to our list of "Other Nentir Vale Websites".

I thought I would say hello to everyone here, on behalf of The Piazza. Please feel welcome to come over and use our Nentir Vale or other forums.

It would be great to see a thread about the adventures you have been having in your campaign.

I saw someone mention, in another thread, that someone was working on some homebrew. If you feel like sharing that (after you are done with it) please feel free to come and post a link.

I know I'd love to see a thread that explains why your website is called: "What's that thing on her foot?" ;-)

I can't post a link (as I've got no karma) but you will find us with a search for "Nentir Vale forum".

David "Big Mac" Shepheard
Global Moderator at The Piazza

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David "Big Mac" Shepheard

Re: Greetings from The Piazza

saghaulor 07 Apr 2012 18:21

Thanks for reaching out to us Big Mac.

Much to our embarrassment we've been pretty lazy about keeping this site/forum up to speed. We have had previous campaigns wherein we were much better about documenting our adventures. Now that we have an audience I think that we will give much more effort to recording our adventures.

You may not have noticed, but we run our group a little differently than a lot of groups. Each player is also a GM. So we all take turns as GM/players. A GMs duty can last as long as s/he wants. On average is runs about 6-15 sessions.

We have constructed a world loosely based on the Nentir Vale, but we have also collaborated with each other to create a home brewed world. Often what happens is that one of our players sort of takes the reigns and constructs a foundation plot, and from there we all begin to add on top of that while maintaining the setting standards as much as possible. For a few of us this is our second time playing like this and both times have turned out to work exceptionally well. All of the player/GMs involved weave in a perfect balance of story and setting that enriches the experience.

If you haven't tried playing in a way like this I highly recommend it.

Re: Greetings from The Piazza

Big Mac 08 Apr 2012 22:20

I think that having every person be a GM (as well as a player) is a good way to spread out the work. It must help stop GMs from getting burned out (and also a good way to make sure everybody appreciates the effort of world-building).

My first D&D group (back in the 2e-days) tried doing that sort of thing, after our primary GM said he was doing too much work, but then the same GM derailed one of the games of the other people running a game. <le sigh> While it lasted, I thought it was really good as one of the GMs made a brilliantly designed dungeon and the other created some very very interesting NPCs. If you guys have found a way to get the best stuff from a number of GMs and roll it into one campaign, I'd say that would be very impressive.

Have you seen the High Res Map of Nerath? That map (from the Conquest of Nerath boardgame) provides a ton of expansion to the south and east of the original Nentir Vale map. If you have created your own homebrew that map might clash with some of your own additions, but if you don't yet have your own map, perhaps you can modify the Nerath map, to add in your own homebrew locations. (We have a thread with a link to that map, but I'll warn you now that it takes ages to download.)

I think there are a few other people out there working to expand on Nentir Vale. I wish it was a bit easier to pull Nentir Vale fans together. I kind of think it is a shame that it does not have an "official fansite", like many of the 2nd Edition campaign setting have, so that groups can share content (and maybe one day knock out a Nentir Vale netbook).

Some people (at our forums) has been talking about combining Elsir Vale (from 3e's Red Hand of Doom and some 4e articles) and Nentir Vale together. I even just stumbled onto someone that did the same thing with Haranshire (from 2e's Night Below).

I don't know if any of those would be useful to you, but they were both mentioned in a thread called "Incorporating Elsir Vale into Nentir Vale", if you fancy checking them out to see if they would help you build your world.

Anyhoo, my gaming group isn't very active at the moment, but if we start playing again, I'll suggest your idea to them.

David "Big Mac" Shepheard
Global Moderator at The Piazza

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David "Big Mac" Shepheard

Re: Greetings from The Piazza

saghaulor 09 Apr 2012 18:18

Big Mac,

Did I mention that we play online? We use Google Hangouts and Google Docs. Hangouts is obviously used for video chat, and we use Docs for a virtual table top. Lastly, we use another site for dice rolls. It's worked pretty well for the last few months. Most of us are scattered all over the country. If you're interested, we could show you how we do things.

Re: Greetings from The Piazza

Big Mac 09 Apr 2012 21:22

I didn't realise that, Saghaulor.

I've done the Google Hangout thing with a few gamers, although it was not for a game. It was fun, but a bit of a bandwidth killer. And I was talking to Americans and stayed up way way too late (I live in the UK) talking.

I've put a couple of things up on Google Docs in the past, but they were reading documents, rather than a shared tabletop. Last thing I was working on was a document, where I was trying to pull the 3e information on Monsters As Characters from the SRD and make it into something I could use for rollling up PCs.

I actually still play 3e now — when I get to play — and the Nentir Vale campaign setting is one of three things that has interested me in the current product line. I'm lucky that I've got 4e experts to talk to (back in our Nentir Vale forum) so that I can find out what 4e products I can raid the Nentir Vale information from. (I'm really sorry that Gazeteer: The Nentir Vale — and the 4e PoL Gazeteer product line that was promised to follow it — got pulled, as that would have been awesome. I hope it gets put back on the schedule before the 5e changeover kicks in.)

I'd be interested to know how you make things work, if it doesn't take you too much time to tell me. I don't have time to do online gaming at the moment, but I should get with the 21st Centuary sometime. LOL

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David "Big Mac" Shepheard

Re: Greetings from The Piazza

saghaulor 09 Apr 2012 23:50

Big Mac,

It's easier to show you then explain it. When you have some time, just let me us know and we'd be happy to invite you for a preview of our gameplay. I'll try to write something up too, it might work.

Re: Greetings from The Piazza

Big Mac 20 Apr 2012 00:52

Thanks a lot. :-)

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David "Big Mac" Shepheard