Community

From the beginning, LFR has encouraged a "you have to follow the important rules" mindset.  I consider that incredibly destructive for a campaign, for the simple reason that it's unlikely that everyone agrees on which rules are important and which ones aren't.

Unless you are incredibly laid back, odds are you have lines that you consider important.  You might not care about a 7-person table, but you might about a DM playing a PC at the table.  You might not care that a player creates a PC using the Dungeon Survival Guide, but you might care that they have equipment from Dungeon adventures or worship an Eberron deity.  You might not care that a player isn't using the latest errata, but you might care that they've continued buying uncommon magic items; or the latter might not bother you, until they show up with 10 of the same low-level item with a useful daily power.

Once you start down the "it's okay to only follow the important rules" path, however, you lose any moral authority to enforce the rules simply because they're rules.  Now, everything becomes a case-by-case decision as to whether this rule is really important in this case, or more likely, you end up simply only playing with people who agree with you on what rules are important.

I think this creates a huge barrier to community.  This isn't a purely theoretical concern; I've seen tension between groups because one considers the other to be a bunch of lousy cheaters, culminating in an unpleasant confrontation over advice members of one group were giving to new players attending another group's gameday.

Spoiler: Show

The players from the other group (which organized a local convention and included some players who had been playing since ~2003) had as their standard practice that DMs could receive rewards for one of their PCs as though they played a module (the group's leader or another non-playing member was considered the table's DM for reporting purposes) and that players could adjust PCs where needed based on what module was being offered (e.g., take a PC that you've played from 1st to 6th level, bump him up to 11th level when a paragon module was offered, and just leave open spaces on your logsheet to theoretically go back and fill in the blanks when lower level modules were offered).

They didn't consider that they were breaking any important rules, and were seriously taken aback when pulled aside and asked not to tell new players playing at a store's gameday that this was something they should do, because they had been trained that this was normal and unobjectionable.

It didn't help that one of the group's members had apparently learned everything he needed to know about arguing from Internet forums, and after several uses of the phrase "Your opinion is inconsequential to me" to the store's owner, was asked not to come back.  None of the other group members returned either, and so far as that other group exists, it's since shifted over to PFS.

One of the entire points of a living campaign is that we're all playing the same game by the same rules, regardless of who you're playing with or where you go.  Once you lose that, you lose a lot of the reason to even have a campaign.

There are (at least) three ways of looking at rules:
* Following rules is a practical issue--you will be punished if you break the rules, so whether you want to or not, following them is the wisest course of action;
* Following rules is a moral issue--you have implicitly agreed to follow them as part of joining the campaign, and failing to do so in any but the most extreme circumstances indicates a moral lack;
* Rules are just guidelines--you should follow them when you can, but if they conflict with your own personal sense of how the situation should be handled, feel free to do what you think is best.

The campaign made an early decision not to have #1 as part of the campaign's mindset.  Not only is there zero enforcement of the rules, but some of the campaign's early decisions seem based on the idea that they didn't want enforcement to even be an option, and there was a pretty clear "mind your own business about what goes on at other people's tables" mindset among some early campaign staff.

If the campaign has #2 as their mindset, then we have a problem.  A group that allows people to play kobold sorcerers, when they know the book isn't approved, is then making an objectively wrong decision.  A player that isn't following the rules isn't just cutting a few corners to enhance their fun, they're doing something wrong.

If the campaign has #3 as their mindset, well, then campaign staff have wasted an awful lot of time coming up with rules and players have wasted even more time talking about them.  I could come up with a rules-light campaign CCG; it wouldn't be 24 pages long.

That's where the cognitive dissonance sets in.  Once you start saying that it's no big deal if someone uses unapproved material (or even, as has been said before, that a DM is being a bit of a jerk if he doesn't let them), you've moved out of the realm of #2 and into #3; at that point, why should we really care about anything else campaign staff have to say.

I'm of the opinion that campaigns should only have rules they care about.  If there's a rule that a player can ignore and still be a fine, upstanding member of the gaming community, then it shouldn't be a rule.  If there's a rule that a good DM who cares about creating a fun game shouldn't be enforcing, then it shouldn't be in the CG.

Hoping this starts a good conversation over what the role of campaign rules should be in a shared-world living campaign.

--
Pauper

If the campaign has #2 as their mindset, then we have a problem.  A group that allows people to play kobold sorcerers, when they know the book isn't approved, is then making an objectively wrong decision.  A player that isn't following the rules isn't just cutting a few corners to enhance their fun, they're doing something wrong.

Why is this controversial or problematic? Unlike some other campaign rules, the list of allowed rules sources is well defined. A group that allows people to play kobold sorcerers, when they know the book isn't approved, is making an objectively wrong decision.

When I run games, I would not allow such a character to play.

May 31, 2012 -- 2:45PM, Pauper wrote:

In a different thread, bgibbons made a very good point about campaign rules

fwiw: I want everyone to follow the rules just 'cuz it's easier. But I'm not going to lose sleep on it. This is still just a game after all.

This from someone that spends huge amounts of time trying to understand and follow the rules (seriously: I cannot understate how much time I've spend on this). I just expect some players to be unaware of some rules. And even when they do know the rules (and purposefully desire to break them), I won't judge them. But I'll tell them enforcing those rules is part of my duty as a DM. And, since this is LFR, this won't be a surprise to them.

Jun 3, 2012 -- 1:55AM, Dodecahedron wrote:

It does not help that the "current" Guide is still marked as DRAFT.

It is marked DRAFT because it is currently letting all the air out of the campaign.

At least according to some people. ;>