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3 years ago ::
Apr 29, 2010 - 5:00PM
#31
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- Dragon Slayer
- If only he would apply himself
- Dammit Jim, this is Star Trek, not D&D!
Date Joined:
Jan 31, 2006
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I have no idea what happened to my post up above. Something is stripping out all the carriage returns. I think I fixed it...
Back on Come and Get It, I always picture the first Shrek movie, when he is working the crowd and gets all the knights to come after him and then beats them all up. I've seen Come and Get It RPd as a series of witty boasts and insults that cause everyone to want to take advantage of the PC, only to have the tables turned on them.
Regardless, it is true that you will usually not see powers RPd. A shame, since they are incredibly more evocative than what we did in 3.5 (swing weapon, swing weapon, swing weapon... hey, you know what? I'm gonna swing my weapon).
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3 years ago ::
Apr 29, 2010 - 5:24PM
#32
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Date Joined:
Jun 15, 2004
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you will usually not see powers RPd.
Well, RP'ing all those different powers might slow down an already tight game... kinda like when players describe in detail what they are wearing at the start of an adventure.
-insert carriage return here-
However, it now seems easier for players to accomplish just about any "stunt" without the DM approving it... simply by altering the fluff text of their normal actions (without altering mechanics).
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3 years ago ::
Apr 29, 2010 - 6:00PM
#33
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Date Joined:
Mar 29, 2001
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1) Regional Flavor -- The regional construct used by LG is not related to role playing in any fashion. LC, LD, LF, etc. did just fine supporting role playing without such a construct. I think the point of extended story threads certainly is more interesting to me as a player, and it may give me more memory of NPCs to interact with. LFR has suffered due to limited extended story lines.
I'll have to respectfully disagree.
LC, LD, LF, etc. all had one thing in common. Their settings were limited. This encouraged focus.
LC was largely in Ravens Bluff. People got to know street names, recurring NPCs, locations. Everyone knew the mayor. Hell, even some of the wildlife got infamous. Anyone remember King?
Amidst an entire galaxy, LF was pretty much just Cularin and it's inhabitants. Some were damn memorable. I dare anyone heavily involved with the campaign to say they don't remember Thurm Loogg.
LD took a different tack - it went all over the world, but used a different focusing element - the White Rose Society.
Living Greyhawk was a global campaign, but had the regional focus present. The players in the the same area mostly belonged to the same region and had linked play experiences as well as writing that was focused on them. There were also quite a few memorable meta-orgs players could be a part of. This fostered a sense of belonging. Of investment. Of being part of a community.
Arcanis had strong factions. Pathfinder has both factions and a centralized adventuring organization to pull the characters together. Even old Virtual Seattle had Claudia Tyger.
Living Forgotten Realms, on the other hand, doesn't have a lot of focus. It's all over the place. One week you're in one place among a bunch of strangers, next week you're on the other side of the planet. You aren't a part of any community, you don't have a real home base, you're a leaf blown about by the winds. It's sometimes hard to come up with good reasons why you should give a damn about this week's damsel or squire in distress.
LFR suffers possibly from too much of a good thing. We have a degree of freedom in going wherever we want, that we never had in Living City.
But with that we lost a sense of tightly knit community.
Roleplaying, real immersive roleplaying, requires that players be able to get to some degree emotionally invested in their characters and the game world. They need to be able to CARE about stuff. Without it, you often at best get a kind of shallow fluff roleplay light where the height of involvement lies with how memorable your funny accent is.
One net result I've seen of this lack of investment? Most of the Paragon level characters I see in my area ended up mostly being cynical, jaded mercenary bastards. Because their players ended up bing cynical and jaded about the campaign. That's just a little sad.
I've played quite a lot of LFR by this point. My main character was supposed to be by design heavily invested in the current timeline's plotlines. She's driven by the events of the last century and the death of Mystra. She has lost, quite literally, her family, her home, even her former power to the Spellplague. She had become a creature of rage and grief and loss. She's about a half step away from embracing Shar as her patron deity.
You'd think this would place her firmly in the FR campaign as presented now, right? Not so much.
Nearly every opportunity to explore these things, the few times they're cropped up, have been met with little to no payoff - the detail is merely part of the background fluff of the adventure and has no lasting effects. Ooh, restoration of a Temple of Mystra, or a cult trying to revive the fallen goddess? No, sorry, you can't get involved. Ah, a spellplagued region! No, aside from a headache, it's just a brief mention in box text. And so on.
In the mass of LFR adventures I have played, so far I can count on one hand the number of times I've run into something that got me really invested. The last time it happened? I got a penalty to checks because I had a particular card in my stack, one card I'd always had for no other reason than roleplaying.
You know what? It was great.
I got to feel personally involved in the situation. Was again disappointed to have no lasting repercussions, not even a mention in the story award.
LFR doesn't have to have regions like LG did. But what it needs is focus, something to hook characters together, give them a reason for existence.
Without it the characters are little more than strangers that happen to run into each other in groups of four to six.
-karma
(edited to fix line formatting)
LFR Characters:
Lady Tiana Elinden Kobori Silverwane - Drow Control Wizard
Kro'tak Warscream - Orc Bard
Fulcrum of Gond - Warforged Laser Cleric
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3 years ago ::
Apr 29, 2010 - 11:08PM
#34
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Date Joined:
Jul 11, 2007
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-snip-
KarmaInferno's entire freakin' post.
-karma
Wow. Well stated.
-Pain
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3 years ago ::
Apr 30, 2010 - 5:04AM
#35
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Date Joined:
Aug 10, 2007
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Karma +1
Dan Anderson
@EpicUthrac
Living Forgotten Realms Calimshan Writing Director
Living Forgotten Realms Epic Writing Director
Meet me at TotalConfusion:
http://www.totalcon.com/RolePlaying.html
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3 years ago ::
Apr 30, 2010 - 6:35AM
#36
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Date Joined:
Apr 25, 2002
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Living Forgotten Realms, on the other hand, doesn't have a lot of focus. It's all over the place. One week you're in one place among a bunch of strangers, next week you're on the other side of the planet. You aren't a part of any community, you don't have a real home base, you're a leaf blown about by the winds. It's sometimes hard to come up with good reasons why you should give a damn about this week's damsel or squire in distress.
LFR suffers possibly from too much of a good thing. We have a degree of freedom in going wherever we want, that we never had in Living City.
But with that we lost a sense of tightly knit community.
I think that puts the responsibility on the players and the organizers - you can have that community. As an example, I listed a mini-home style campaign that would solve all of those problems here.
It has everything people want from a set of adventures - quests, strongly linked mods, and a purpose that ultimately comes together. It does require a couple of MYRE mods to really put it together and make it count, but they're reasonably straightforward to do.
I think you could also make the following mini-style campaign:
MINI1-X, WATE, BALD, MOON - campaign of the largest cities of Faerun, plus MOON mods. Not as strongly linked, but it shouldn't be too hard to make a couple of MYRE mods involving say Candlekeep to tie some threads together - I've got a character playing mostly these mods, so I'm not as clear as to where it could go with the right MYRE.
All that this requires is that a player make a character that will only play mods from those sets of regions or that an organizer try to run mods to concentrate on those. Get a bunch of players and an organizer willing to do just that and you can have a very flavorful, linked campaign with purpose...
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3 years ago ::
Apr 30, 2010 - 7:34AM
#37
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I think that puts the responsibility on the players and the organizers - you can have that community. As an example, I listed a mini-home style campaign that would solve all of those problems here.
That can work, if you're consistently playing with the same players, and the same DM -- in other words, in a home game, or in a game day in which you've got the same group getting together every time.
It doesn't do much, if anything, for the LFR player who frequents conventions, or otherwise doesn't have a stable, consistent group with whom he or she plays.
"Of course [Richard] has a knife. He always has a knife. We all have knives. It's 1183, and we're barbarians!" - Eleanor of Aquitaine, "The Lion in Winter"
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3 years ago ::
Apr 30, 2010 - 9:07AM
#38
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Date Joined:
Apr 25, 2002
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I think that puts the responsibility on the players and the organizers - you can have that community. As an example, I listed a mini-home style campaign that would solve all of those problems here.
That can work, if you're consistently playing with the same players, and the same DM -- in other words, in a home game, or in a game day in which you've got the same group getting together every time.
It doesn't do much, if anything, for the LFR player who frequents conventions, or otherwise doesn't have a stable, consistent group with whom he or she plays.
Sure it does. If the player wants the regional experience, it is up to them to make sure that they get it. They don't want it, they don't have to have it.
If I were starting LFR right now, I'd make 3 characters - one for all the DALE/AGLA/CORM mods, one for the WATE/BALD/MOON mods, and then 1 more character for everything else. You go to a convention, you sign the correct character up for a mod or you pick something else to play. If the convention is offering the wrong mods, don't go. You have an organizer or non-stable group, make requests for mods based on trying to do just that - I'm sure many organizers would be happy to try for more of a regional feel if the DMs aren't a problem(and I think the DMs would be happier too)
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3 years ago ::
Apr 30, 2010 - 9:24AM
#39
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Date Joined:
Aug 19, 2007
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Just to counter the chorus of "me too"s out there, for my own medium-sized (30-40 active players) group the current atmosphere in LFR is just about right, and, given actual new mods, would be perfect for us.
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3 years ago ::
Apr 30, 2010 - 11:10PM
#40
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Date Joined:
Mar 29, 2001
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I think that puts the responsibility on the players and the organizers - you can have that community. As an example, I listed a mini-home style campaign that would solve all of those problems here.
Yes, that could work. Provided you HAVE that level of organization. And if you do, great! I am certain that players will enjoy it immensely.
You present that to most convention LFR organizers and they'll look at you like you had three heads, though. Many conventions they're just having trouble getting enough judges. Most just slap together whatever list of adventures they think haven't been run in the area overmuch. They get the PDFs, put together a list of slots based on how many players they can handle, and that's it. They simply don't have the luxury in time or resources for this kind of elaborate structure.
If nothing else, it requires knowing somewhat what characters will be participating. When you're faces with several dozen or even hundreds of players showing up, and not knowing what level, class, and roles they are bringing, such a rigidly planned structure will be VERY difficult to pull off.
There's also the very real feeling that while making up stuff on your own locally might be enjoyable, it isn't "official", and holds no more weight than anything else you might make up that's not actually supported by any rules.
And quite frankly, while it is true that the players and event organizers can do stuff on their own initiative to enhance their local game experience, there really need to also be tools built into the structure of the campaign itself, for immersion and community.
As I said, it doesn't have to specifically be "regions". Factions, meta-orgs, NPC-run adventuring groups, etc. Something that characters can belong to that is larger than themselves. Something that they can feel a part of, that they can take pride in, that they can take with them. A real, rules-supported sense of home and belonging.
So that if a player travels halfway across the country to a convention and states to a table of complete strangers, "I am a Knight of So-and-So!" or "I am a citizen of X!", it actually MEANS something significant beyond his or her personal make-believe.
It's a personal connection to something larger than themselves that I speak of. And that's not something any local choice of which adventures to play can achieve.
-karma
LFR Characters:
Lady Tiana Elinden Kobori Silverwane - Drow Control Wizard
Kro'tak Warscream - Orc Bard
Fulcrum of Gond - Warforged Laser Cleric
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