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The campaign is not the rules. The campaign is the people that play it.

Allowing near-complete rebuilds encourages people to play the game. It means that my pre-martial power, Urgrosh-wielding, Rain-of-Blows dwarf ranger doesn't have to be retired.

Sure, it allows some cheesetastic rules abuse, but that's the price of keeping players from being frustrated that they cannot use the newest, most exciting rules options. In your local gaming group, you're free to promote more continuity via social pressure.

I also don't understand the folks who are saying LFR is not a "Living" campaign. I'm unclear their source of the definition of living. Mine would come from here:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_campaign

Which only really requires that characters exist in a shared universe. It may be different than previous RPGA living campaigns, but does that make it worse? Only time will tell.

I repeat: the campaign is not the rules. The campaign is the people that play it. If the campaign is all about min-maxing and no roleplaying, the only person to blame is the one staring back at you in the mirror.

A lot of good discussion here. I've been mulling the changes over. In the end, my perspective is a lot like GrahamWills; I almost didn't post because he captured a lot of my feelings. But, as I continue to think on it, I see a lot of angles come together.

On the one hand, WotC is clearly trying to grow up. TSR was practically never a savvy company and WotC has often been ridiculously ineffective at creating a sound business model. We are probably looking at the smartest the company has ever been in terms of business strategy. The emphasis for 4E has been to increase the appeal of the product. The latest announcements show a huge WotC interest in expanding the casual play player base. And they aren't done yet.

On the other hand, one of the constant requests from players for the LFR admins has been more story. We just finished DDXP with a huge story emphasis. We just finished seeing the MINI campaign introduction and MYREs. Keith mentioned an LFR emphasis on story in his notes from one of the seminars. Clearly the campaign is trying to embrace story.

As others have said, a lot of factors contribute to the PC having diminished prominence and importance. Without a tight regional system, the adventure and the PC are less tightly integrated. Replaying, rapid leveling, high PC numbers per person, and too many regions all cloud our ability to remember what someone plays, let alone what our PC has done. At DDXP I must have had at least 3 conversations about famous LG PCs (not ours, but those of a third player) with other players that I had never discussed LG with before! LG allowed players to become integrated to the story. The personalities of PCs, their motivations, their allegiances, their roles in promoting meta-orgs and ideals... these were all known to other players. Sure, there were elitist angles to some of that. But, there was a truly shared and living campaign. And, when other gaming companies looked at LG they wanted a peace of that. A piece of something that WotC and the RPGA have turned around and given up.

LFR has used a drastically different model. Is it superior? I do like seeing new players. I don't like the emphasis on mechanics. More and more decisions at the table seem to be based on power and mechanics and not on personality. With so little story and regional emphasis, I can't fully blame them. I try to suggest that maybe they should set aside their Dice of Auspicious Fortune and RP more, but in the end this is the campaign we have.

Those in charge will have to decide which angle to stress... mechanics vs. story. Openness to all players vs. forging a shared living community where PCs matter. Introductory world vs. rich campaign. You can't have it all in one campaign, though you can have two campaigns, one that brings people in and one which provides more depth.

I have to say that I don't get all the wailing an gnashing of teeth.  Now I do believe in a certain amount of character continuity and I certainly won't be going nuts with the retrains on my PCs.  That's my choice.  It isn't gonna bug me if someone else does it, either.

As for campaign continuity... the RPGA has started to emphasize the casual public play aspect.  Part of the draw (at least to me) is that you can go to a game now and again, play a slot and have a complete mod/story from beginnign to end.  For someone like me who doesn't have the time/opportunity to play in a long ongoing home campaign this is a boon.  It doesn't matter if I miss a session or two or three, I don't miss out on anything or get lost.  It certainly isn't meant to replace home campaigns.  Perhaps we'll have some more OP stuff in the future that's more tightly woven.

And lets remember that at this point in previous campaigns (LG most notably) there wasn't a lot of well developed ongoing plots or continuity either.  Those took time to develop.

Feb 4, 2010 -- 8:16AM, Madfox11 wrote:

The thing that is somewhat lacking in LFR is the the tight storylines where individual PCs can influence the direction of the campaign.

I really liked the tighter storyline aspect of the adventures at DDXP, the fact that the SPEC adventures were connected to the ADCP adventure.  I would love to see more of that, as possible - and I know that is something being worked at.

As characters get higher into late Paragon, and much more so at Epic tier, we probably should expect to see a bit more of the players having an effect on the direction of the campaign.  I know I would love follow-on adventures to the BI from DDXP: a return to that area, and see what has changed.   Just like seeing what happens on Moray after MOON2-1 and the fate of the protagonist and antagonist in CORM2-1.  It has to be hard to balance sequels for the more dedicated players and still have them be appropriate for newer players.

I am happy about the new retraining rules.  While I understand and appreciate the perspective of character and story continuity, there is also the pain of making choices that don't work out how you think they will or learning more about the mechanics of the game but being stuck with having made choices when you didn't know so much.  I also don't feel that there is as big a divide between effective PCs and role-playing.  How memorable a PC is or how well someone role-plays does not necessarily have any relation to how effective their PC is in combat. 

I think one of the biggest challenges in 4e has been with combat slog; that point in the battle where the monsters pose no real threat but must still be defeated.  Having suboptimal PCs might be fun for some people to play with but I've been at a table with the guy who has a fighter who never marks because that doesn't fit his "concept" of his character.  He can then do all the great role-playing he wants but the only thing I'm going to remember is how the rest of the group had to carry the weight of the combat without his help.

After Gen Con last year my experience with the Spec at paragon was so bad I ended up taking the Inescapable Force feat and buying a +2 force weapon.  Now, almost 6 months later I have yet to face an insubstantial foe.  In addition, the Toughness feat that seemed so essential for my dwarf paladin at 1st level is pretty much a waste at 14th level.  Yet, I am still in the process of trying to get the new powers from Divine Power and haven't been able to afford a retraining to change out Toughness.  Now, at his next level I'll be able to change that.  He'll still be the orphaned dwarf who was raised in a dragonborn monastery which is why he worships Bahamut, he'll just be better at expressing that devotion.