Zeitgeist

Those who have been following the blog for a while will recall that I've been wondering what 4e is like from the DM side of the screen. I had a taste during our Eye of Flame one-shot, and as those posts showed, I liked what I saw.

Since then, I've been content to continue playing Pieter in the SSTL campaign and enjoy being a player. But the DMing bug never really went away. I continued to fiddle around the edges, designing Paldemar and Sinruth redux and the runestalker for A Fire at Night. But I didn't want to take the reins for a couple of reasons:

1. I didn't want to be disloyal to my DM, who is doing a wonderful job running the SSTL campaign;
2. I didn't know whether I wanted the extra work that comes from DMing, especially when you DM from scratch; and
3. I wasn't really sure what I wanted to build a campaign around.

Then I found Zeitgeist, a soon-to-be-commenced adventure path by EN publishing. What's it about? I'll let them tell you:

Steam and soot darken the skies above the city of Flint, and winds sweeping across its majestic harbor blow the choking products of industrial forges into the fey rainforests that dot its knifetoothed mountains. Since the earliest ages when the people of Risur founded this city, they feared the capricious beings that hid in those fog-shrouded peaks, but now, as the march of progress and the demands of national defense turn Flint into a garden for artifice and technology, the old faiths and rituals that kept the lurkers of the woods at bay are being abandoned.

The Unseen Court, the Great Hunt, and the many spirits of the land long ago conquered by Risur’s kings no longer receive tribute, but they cannot enter these new cities of steam and steel to demand their tithe. The impoverished workers who huddle in factory slums fear monsters of a different breed, shadowy children of this new urban labyrinth. Even their modern religions have no defenses against these fiends.

Times are turning. The skyseers — Risur’s folk prophets since their homeland’s birth — witness omens in the starry wheels of heaven, and they warn that a new age is nigh. But what they cannot foresee, hidden beyond the steam and soot of the night sky, is the face of this coming era, the spirit of the new age. The zeitgeist.

In one fell swoop, EN publishing solved problems #2 and #3. Having an adventure path to base a campaign around would minimise my DM work, and the setting background of the rise of technology is one that fires my imagination to levels it's hard to describe. I couldn't wait to DM it.

But what about problem #1? Wouldn't my DM feel betrayed? As it turns out, no. He's just as jazzed by the idea of being a player in Zeitgeist as I am of running it. Problems solved!

Zeitgeist starts in "Spring 2011" (sometime between 1 March and 31 May), and I can't wait. When it does, we'll be putting the Stones and Shadow, Trees and Light campaign on hold for a while. We fully intend to come back to it, but for now a change of scenery is most welcome.

I'm always happy to advocate for things I'm excited about, so I encourage everyone to check Zeitgeist out. And if you're as excited about it as I am: tell your friends, tell your local gaming group, tell everyone you meet at your FLGS. Oh, and make a pledge at Zeitgeist's kickstarter project.

Damn this is going to be good!