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1 year ago ::
Jan 17, 2012 - 10:24AM
#11
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Date Joined:
Jun 13, 2010
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The Forgotten Realms is itself a very tense setting to use because everything that comes out for it counts as a publication, and publications must be cleared by the writing team and the WOTC legal department, and thats the last thing they want to do. Thats why we can't share MyRealms. Anything the lawyers haven't already pounced on is savaged by a certain segment of fans who read and guard the Realmslore like it's a favorite set of novels. This can only be addressed by making the next "shared world" one that is not guarded by lawyers. One owned by the campaign itself.
The problem isn't just the Forgotten Realms setting, any monster from the official books or the website is covered by copyright as well. So to make the shared world lawyerproof, you'd have to refer to the monsters by name and book, and get the DM to look them up, or WotC would have to put out a blanket "can be reproduced in adventures" licence on all their monsters (at which point some wag will put out an adventure set in a wierd menagerie with the full monster manual list). If there are decent online tools then just listing the monsters may not be too bad (i'm thinking an encounter creator where it will print out the stat blocks of the selected monsters on as few pages as possible), but it's hardly ideal, and raises the barrier for entry when people start using monsters from MM2+, or other supplements.
If we can get permission to reproduce within OP adventures, or only adventures shared via an official site, or whatever, then this starts to look a lot more interesting.
I'm also against the campaign charging, it will be impossible to enforce, result in fewer statistics per game played (since people will pirate it and not report their results), and most likely a lot fewer games played overall (since DMs don't want to bear the cost, and it puts another barrier up to player entry)
"I am the seeker, I am the stalker, I am the walrus"
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1 year ago ::
Jan 17, 2012 - 10:59AM
#12
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Date Joined:
Aug 22, 2007
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I reject the idea that a bad DM who creates a bad play experience when running an average LFR module is going to be magically transformed into a good DM who creates a good play experience by giving him even less to work with. There are DMs who can create a fun play experience with minimal input. These DMs are overwhelmingly likely to also create a fun play experience when given even more tools to work with. I don't understand the idea that DMs who treat an adventure as a dice-rolling exercise will suddenly stop doing so when given a map and matrix shorn of the details that now adorn a module. Not only don't I agree that a living campaign adventure isn't "regular D&D", I find the statement incomprehensible. If players come up with different solutions than the author envisioned, the LFR DM empowerment rules give the DM free reign to roll with it. (In fact, good DMs have been doing that all the way back to 2e RPGA play, even without explicit empowerment.) If the argument is that most DMs aren't comfortable enough to come up with content on the fly to run with whatever ideas the players come up with, I'm perplexed as to why anyone would think that would change if you give the DM even less to start with. Yes, there are some rails on the adventure. If the players don't really want to play the adventure or the author would rather run something else, their best option is to run a My Realms rather than changing things beyond recognition. I'm not sure I disagree with that, however. The primary difference between living campaign play and home campaign play is the result of multiple DMs. NPCs aren't really going to remember you, and will be played in completely different ways by different DMs. DMs don't have the ability to impose (or grant) lasting consequences beyond the module, because we don't want to grant a random DM that level of control over your character or the campaign. I don't really think that's solvable, and to be honest, I'm willing to take the downside of this in exchange for not having to deal with the results of unrestricted DM power. As far as charging money is concerned, Living City's experience is that this is a non-starter. Ryan Dancey attempted to use a membership fee system to support the campaign, with the primary options being $30/year for unlimited play, or a $5 setup fee and then $1 per module played (1st level PCs played free). It was a complete failure. The issue wasn't so much a rational discussion of whether the benefit was worth the cost, but more a complete backlash against the concept of charging money at all. (Here's an amusing rant from that time period.) I doubt the "It's my right to do X for free" mindset has changed much.
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1 year ago ::
Jan 17, 2012 - 11:27AM
#13
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Date Joined:
Mar 23, 2007
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Great thoughts all around. @Kensan_Oni - Why can't we have both? You could pay, say $5 per module download, or instead you could pay a $20 yearly subscription fee to download up to 52 modules, or whatever seems appropriate. (The yearly module ceiling vs. an "all you can eat" model prevents people from sharing their subscription with a bunch of other people.) Will people cheat and circumvent the system? Sure.
I think my real point was, hey, it's really nice that we don't have to pay for adventures, but it's at the expense of a bunch of people volunteering their time. Micropayments for mods doesn't seem unreasonable.
As another alternative, you could mimic the Facebook game style of payment - play all you want for free, and if you want to pay for "extras" you can do that. For example, you could pay for extra TUs for your character, or you could pay for a "free" raise dead. Just spitballing, these are by no means complete ideas (for example, how do you enforce payment and usage of "extras"?)
@JRedGiant1 - I agree with you 100%. I apologize for not including con organizers in my list of people we should pay. The RPGA could even have a stipend paid to conventions based upon modules ordered and reported to help support the cost of printing, DM rewards, and the like. (Again, just spitballing, I know there's probably room for some sort of fraud there)
@BGibbons - My reply to those ranters who think it's their "right" to play for free would be, "then go play in your basement with your friends. That's free." A living campaign isn't the only way to play D&D. @Peter_Seckler - I'm interested why you're ok with paying your FLGS for space to play the game, but not ok with paying for the module itself?
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1 year ago ::
Jan 17, 2012 - 11:27AM
#14
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Date Joined:
Mar 17, 2005
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For those that say charging for mods wouldn't work (and I'm not saying it will or won't), I am curious to your thoughts on why it has been basically unnoticed in Pathfinder's OP (and they charge more than I would if I was going to charge). Pathfinder charges $4/adventure and their OP seems to be doing quite well.
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1 year ago ::
Jan 17, 2012 - 12:19PM
#15
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Here's my thoughts:
[snip]I have written a blog post "Here's to No Living Campaign This Time"
Link: terrible-and-true.tumblr.com/post/155733...
[snip]
That said: I love Living Campaigns and I hope we have another one! But I would only suggest the following:[snip]
So which one is it? I guess you want a Living Campaign but only if it fits your specific parameters.
For me, there is no ambiguity: I hope there is another living campaign. Hopefully, they can combine some of the good features of LFR and LG into one that is even better. Of course, the problem is everyone has different ideas on what is "good" and "bad" with each campaign, and each edition for that matter. And often these ideas directly contradict each other. lol
With that in mind, it will be very interesting to see exactly how they craft a "all things to all people" version of DnD. But, in any event, I hope there is another living campaign.
Daren
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1 year ago ::
Jan 17, 2012 - 12:52PM
#16
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Date Joined:
Oct 26, 2008
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I hope that there is another living campaign. Going to a purely Encounters style play will be disappointing.
Pay for play? An interesting idea. Given the world of today, such micro/mini transactions should be easy to handle. And anyone arguing that WotC _has_ to give out free modules ... um, no. Not really.
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1 year ago ::
Jan 17, 2012 - 1:48PM
#17
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Date Joined:
Aug 25, 2008
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I organize and take turns running weekly LFR games in the Central MA area, and I have toyed with the idea of charging for a spot at the table, but I always come down on the side of doing it for free, since I have a lot of younger players, and I don't want to exclude them.
LFR is my first Living Campaign, and I really enjoy it; the structure of the adventures lends the campaign an episodic feel, like a TV show. Most of the players I have had very little Realms knowledge, and I know a few of them picked up a book to learn more about the world they were playing in. Most of the frustration there was that the books are nearly all set 100 years before when their character came into being. It is too bad that the use of an established setting causes headaches, but at least that part of the problem isn't that hard to deal with: just use a more generic world.
I think an annual subscription to a living campaign would make a lot of sense. It could go towards paying someone to come up with a world in which the Living Campaign takes place. In a perfect world, I would like to see a new world with some reason for the characters to be there; I really love the Points of Light concept described in the 4E books, but I don't know that a post-Spellplague Faerun ever achieved what they described. In particular, the characters moving from area to area between adventures with no "story" really undermined the Point of Light idea. Where LFR has a Global Admin Team, this would be the world keepers of the new campaign. The way Calminsham and Netheril adventures are coming out seems like the absolute perfect way to go: release a set of adventures that all take place in one general area, and all have one grander story when tied together. Groups that are paying for the subscription can get a login to a web page where their groups contributions are taken into account (much like how newer stories are doing now). This should help with piracy, since even if people get the adventures, they can't really participate without a buy-in. The hardest parts are getting enough adventures out to let players advance and keeping older adventures relevant after the world's story has moved on. And coming up with a world, and some kind of a story that players around the world can participate in....
What makes me sad - no more compiled magazines: http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/27580349/Dungeon_and_Dragon_Magazine_PDFs&post_num=24#495423645
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1 year ago ::
Jan 17, 2012 - 2:02PM
#18
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Date Joined:
Dec 22, 2010
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At my FLGS, each player pays £2.50/slot and the DM is given £1/player in store credit.
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1 year ago ::
Jan 17, 2012 - 2:08PM
#19
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Date Joined:
Jun 14, 2009
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A forward appology to people not in the US. This will seem a weird addition to the conversation for you.
Charging for games tends to be a West Coast/East Coast divide kind of deal (Except in Arizona, where they do things their own way). It's almost proven that the East Coast Model of paying for game time tends not to work on the West Coast, where people will just find a different game to play.
So, I'm curious. How do we do things in Arizona that's so different from everywhere else?
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1 year ago ::
Jan 17, 2012 - 2:19PM
#20
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Encounters is really popular, which is great. However, I can't really get excited about a "campaign" where I only ever get to play 1st level characters that I play for a couple months and then put in a drawer. It'd be nice if there were a way to take the enthusiasm for Encounters and use it to feed into a new living campaign.
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