Last summer, I spent a few blog posts delving into 4e. Since 5e's inception in spring of 2012, I hadn't revisited much of any of the main 4e concepts, apart from various books that might contain pieces of lore I wanted to revisit. With my deep dive, I took a look at many of the things I had forgotten about. At the height of it all, a friend purchased the Rules Compendium and Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms and we sat down to build characters, utilizing things like Character Themes and even creating Fortune Card decks for our characters. It was a VERY interesting afternoon, as many things came back to me that I had flat out forgotten.
Last year, I invested in a few 4e things for my collection. A local store had a few packs of the Fury of the Feywild Fortune Cards, so I spent my time buying the packs to fill my collection. I also purchased the Forgotten Realms Player's Guide in order to have the genasi and swordmage class in print. I figured that I wanted all the race/class core options in the books so that down the road I wouldn't look back and regret not having all the options.
Fast forward a year later (it's amazing how fast time moves when you have so many things going on). I find myself continuing to be fascinated by the amount of content in 4e, as well as the nostalgic memories of what it meant to sit down and play with friends. My friends started playing in early March 2010, and from there we tried to meet up monthly and play, though that fell off as people were dealing with college, moving away, and all the stuff that happens with that time of life. And so, I bought books, miniatures, dungeon tiles, and devoured all the online content, all the while dreaming of playing more D&D. In those days, there was little online content to sit and watch, so I would visit and re-visit the Robot Chicken game. It was unlike anything I had ever watched, and it made me want to play a nice long session with hand drawn maps, puzzles, and engaging combats.
D&D has a huge online presence right now. There are tons of streamers and podcasts. WotC has their own weekly streams, all led by Chris Perkins. Critical Role has a huge following of people submitting their own fanart and posting endlessly on Reddit about the session they just watched. All this is in the span of 8 years since I first sat down at the table and dreamed about playing with my friends for hours, with no worries, since none of us were 'true' adults yet, just college kids working summer jobs who could sleep in, work out a ton, and have (most) of our bills paid for.
With all the online presence, I have noticed one thing: nobody pays attention to the older editions of D&D. 5e is all the rage, and while I (and my current playgroup) love it, there is still wisdom and fun to be had exploring the other editions. As WotC had stated numerous times with 5e - play the edition that you love - it's all D&D (or something close to it). And so, I've been brainstorming a dream project of mine, something I would love to tinker with for a number of reasons.
The project: play some 4e D&D, then edit the session, making it a fun, watchable video that I would post to YouTube.
This (dream) project would definitely take work, but it would be a labor of love for me. In high school, I did some amateur video editing and filming. This was in the early days of wireless internet when iTunes was easy (and fun) to use, there were no commercials on YouTube, and Netflix sent you DVD's in the mail. Now being far removed from high school, being able to video edit and craft a story through visuals mentally brings me back to a simpler time, while also being able to take the creative lessons of life and apply them with a fresh set of eyes.
I would probably be using some standard, low-tech video editing software, but there's plenty of things one can do with that. Watching the Robot Chicken games proves you don't need anything hi-tech to create an engaging video.
I've spoken to a number of my friends that I originally played 4e with, and they are all intrigued by my idea. I really would like to offer the chance for my brother to DM, as it's something he was always ready to jump in and do, but didn't have a ton of options for it at the time. Allowing him to do something like that would be nostalgic for him as well.
Let me lay out what the game would entail:
Last year, I invested in a few 4e things for my collection. A local store had a few packs of the Fury of the Feywild Fortune Cards, so I spent my time buying the packs to fill my collection. I also purchased the Forgotten Realms Player's Guide in order to have the genasi and swordmage class in print. I figured that I wanted all the race/class core options in the books so that down the road I wouldn't look back and regret not having all the options.
Fast forward a year later (it's amazing how fast time moves when you have so many things going on). I find myself continuing to be fascinated by the amount of content in 4e, as well as the nostalgic memories of what it meant to sit down and play with friends. My friends started playing in early March 2010, and from there we tried to meet up monthly and play, though that fell off as people were dealing with college, moving away, and all the stuff that happens with that time of life. And so, I bought books, miniatures, dungeon tiles, and devoured all the online content, all the while dreaming of playing more D&D. In those days, there was little online content to sit and watch, so I would visit and re-visit the Robot Chicken game. It was unlike anything I had ever watched, and it made me want to play a nice long session with hand drawn maps, puzzles, and engaging combats.
D&D has a huge online presence right now. There are tons of streamers and podcasts. WotC has their own weekly streams, all led by Chris Perkins. Critical Role has a huge following of people submitting their own fanart and posting endlessly on Reddit about the session they just watched. All this is in the span of 8 years since I first sat down at the table and dreamed about playing with my friends for hours, with no worries, since none of us were 'true' adults yet, just college kids working summer jobs who could sleep in, work out a ton, and have (most) of our bills paid for.
With all the online presence, I have noticed one thing: nobody pays attention to the older editions of D&D. 5e is all the rage, and while I (and my current playgroup) love it, there is still wisdom and fun to be had exploring the other editions. As WotC had stated numerous times with 5e - play the edition that you love - it's all D&D (or something close to it). And so, I've been brainstorming a dream project of mine, something I would love to tinker with for a number of reasons.
The project: play some 4e D&D, then edit the session, making it a fun, watchable video that I would post to YouTube.
This (dream) project would definitely take work, but it would be a labor of love for me. In high school, I did some amateur video editing and filming. This was in the early days of wireless internet when iTunes was easy (and fun) to use, there were no commercials on YouTube, and Netflix sent you DVD's in the mail. Now being far removed from high school, being able to video edit and craft a story through visuals mentally brings me back to a simpler time, while also being able to take the creative lessons of life and apply them with a fresh set of eyes.
I would probably be using some standard, low-tech video editing software, but there's plenty of things one can do with that. Watching the Robot Chicken games proves you don't need anything hi-tech to create an engaging video.
I've spoken to a number of my friends that I originally played 4e with, and they are all intrigued by my idea. I really would like to offer the chance for my brother to DM, as it's something he was always ready to jump in and do, but didn't have a ton of options for it at the time. Allowing him to do something like that would be nostalgic for him as well.
Let me lay out what the game would entail:
- Video One - Character Introductions: A friend has offered that he could draw the characters, which would allow me to use that art while we all discuss who we are, a bit about our story, and give an overall idea of who we are playing before diving in
- Video Two - The Game: This video would be our adventure
My own personal ideas on how I would want this game to go are as follows:
- The adventure to start would be The Twisting Halls, from the 4e Red Box Starter Set - the DM would be free to tweak things like Treasure, Monster Themes, PC Backstories, etc
- Each PC would select a Theme
- Each PC would have a deck of Fortune Cards
- Cards from the Despair Deck would be included for various appropriate events in the adventure
From there, I think as a group we would figure out what to do next. If we wanted to keep playing together and filming, I could keep editing videos, making it a labor of love. In my mind, we could keep playing published 4e content, as there is a wealth of adventures to play, and it would be easier to customize various things (Monster Themes, etc) when the groundwork is already laid out.
No plans set in stone yet - this is all my dreams and ideas. Sometimes, you just need to write things gout and get feedback and encouragement. My next steps are continuing to sort out if friends are interested while buying more Fortune Cards. Worst case scenario, I will have a solid 4e collection to dust off and throw down with some D&D nostalgia...
Comments
Post a Comment