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Feb 8, 2010 -- 11:04AM, Alphastream1 wrote:

In LG, it felt like the majority of play was in a region. Later, it also included a meta-region, which worked well since LG had grown to have solid reasons for caring about one's neighbors.

And yet, the majority of play wasn't in region - 8 regionals, (later) 8 meta-regionals, 20 cores per year. This suggests that just a small structural change in structure could change people's impressions of LFR substantially.

Drezden, among others, suggests we reward PCs for playing in-region. If we can do that, then all other modules for that PC are effectively "core", and we have something reminiscent of LG. I don't think this is actually workable at the moment, given how few modules each region produces per year (now spread over 5 level bands), but I think it's the right direction for our thinking.

Feb 9, 2010 -- 12:26PM, Mithreinmaethor wrote:

The LG data for play would be an incomplete data set compared to the LFR data set since LG was not tracked as well as LFR is.

I'm not at all sure that I agree with that statement.

For most of the run of LG, you had Player Rewards, which meant that most players had a vested interest in getting the table reported (so they could accumulate points).

In LFR, particularly now that we (a) only have GM Rewards, and (b) no longer have the online character tracker, there's even less incentive to report tables than LG had.

Feb 9, 2010 -- 10:09AM, bgibbons wrote:

With the tight level bands and the way releases bounce around these bands, I will be curious to see how LFR handles continuity between modules released later which will necessarily be played before modules released earlier.

I try to keep that in mind, i.e. by refering NPCs in a neutral way or by using follow-up events only in hiher tiers, but does not always work.
I.e. playing DALE1-4 after DALE2-1 is going to be really awkward.

Gomez

• You need something like a home base or port of call, with an organization you care about.
• You want NPCs that are interesting, powerful, and appealing. You look up to the king or queen. You envy the grand wizard. You are curious about the leaders of the knights. You recognize the power of the large church. You want to work your way up, gaining prestige, acceptance, notoriety, and true tradable influence.
• You want the adventures to place some responsibiity in your hands for how those organizations fare. Ideally, you are responsible for NPCs that you can become attached to as their fate is determined.
• You want, over time, to learn more about the place. Secrets appear, are uncovered, yielding more secrets.

• The extent to which NPCs and story matter should be mitigated, so you don't create the old boy's club. The biggest thing is to not assume that players know what has come before. The easiest way is to remove any assumption regarding retired adventures.
• In addition, keep the story focused on the now, vs. the past. Feed off of the past, but keep on the present. The king remaried. Rather than rehash that, just make mention of it, and focus on the next thing that happens with the new queen. Keep the setting rich but the action on the current story arc.
• Make prior involvment matter from a story perspective, not a mechanical or adventure success one. Because you know the NPC, you have more fun and depth out of the play experience, but you don't auto-succeed (nor auto-fail for not knowing the NPC).
• Bring new parts of the story at low levels, rather than the traditional method of adding more to high levels. Low level play should be interesting. The recent SPEC2-1 H1 having one of the coolest story aspects is an example of what I am talking about.