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Aug 9, 2012 -- 4:57PM, -Aribeth- wrote:

But if you all truly right about the effort it will take to do this, it concerns me that the effort of doing something that would be considered a Heraculean task would be impossible to do.

Assuming what you mean is "It concerns me that making small changes to a document is a huge amount of work"... yeah.  But while it may be a shame, it has predictive power.  It's likely an explanation with why we're still using the draft meta-org document, and so on...

*shrug*  Committees are about stopping inappropriate work from getting done.  As such, they make it harder to do any work.  That's what they do.

Aug 9, 2012 -- 3:02PM, Undrhil wrote:

I have to wonder ... what theme (or themes) is the OP considering from Dark Sun, that he/she would bring this up for a debate?

I mean, there are dozens of themes available now from other sources ... are none of them enough for your character concept?  Also, themes are optional .. if none of those fit, nothing says you *have* to have a theme.... 

I'm a he  

And as you can see in my sig, I'm writing a Psion handbook. Since the best theme for Psions is Noble Adept, it got me thinking why it was banned in LFR and if that needs to stay that way. I didn't think so, so I posted my opinion. 

I've also been fooling around in the past with building an Ardent around the level 16 feature of the Resurgent Wilder paragon path. That has the Wilder theme as a prereq, so that build could also have seen the light of play. As is, I didn't bother too much with it since I only play LFR and don't want DMs telling me I can't play my character for reasons I consider to be outdated 

Aug 9, 2012 -- 4:57PM, -Aribeth- wrote:

But if you all truly right about the effort it will take to do this, it concerns me that the effort of doing something that would be considered a Herculean task would be impossible to do.

I spent almost 25 minutes just changing a document from the author using double space after periods to single space (because you have to replace one by one since it is used in stat blocks for spacing).

Campaign stuff takes time. All sorts of stuff. It just isn't easy running a campaign. It is great at times, but there are many distractions and many small and big things that compete for time.

Couple that with the specific issue: allowing Dark Sun flavored content into LFR. Whatever your perspective, there are going to be people that feel it is a bad idea. There might not be a right or wrong to that, but there is a vision for a campaign and that does carry an element of right/wrong to it. Even when a campaign has the goal of allowing as much material as possible, there are limits. You may disagree with them at times, and that's fine - the campaign is more than a few individuals. At times, it can even make sense to do something the majority of individuals don't like, because it takes the campaign in a better direction over time. Part of being an admin is making decisions, whether popular or unpopular.

On my end, I'm another voice against allowing the content. There is so much content already in LFR. As an Ashes of Athas admin, we limit tons of content. The only themes we allow are the Dark Sun themes. That won't change. We make that choice because this is a Dark Sun campaign. Every one of those themes was written fantastically to capture the basic types of characters on Athas. It has been, I think, really good for both campaigns to have these themes isolated to just one campaign.

Edit: One last thing. There are in some posts an undercurrent of 'at this stage in the campaign, you owe it to us'. I can't disagree enough. At this stage in a campaign the volunteers are pretty worn out. Those kinds of comments rob volunteers of energy. This is a great stage in a campaign for gamers to help. To become volunteers. To offer to write an adventure. To offer to playtest. To offer to edit. To offer to DM. To drum up support.

There is also the undercurrent of 'this is the end, just let us blow stuff up; give us all the toys'. I can't agree with that either. A campaign should not undo its vision at the end. If anything, it should hold as true as ever to that vision.

Finally, it is worth saying that LFR could very easily go on for a very long time. It could go as far as Gen Con 2014 (or whenever D&D Next releases, who knows!), or perhaps just change rules and continue as a D&D Next campaign. The end may not be near.

Aug 28, 2012 -- 1:53AM, ShakaUVM wrote:

Aug 7, 2012 -- 8:36AM, Pauper wrote:

I'd be fine with banning warforged, though.

They were called Gondsmen.

Two problems with this analysis:

1) Gondsmen weren't living constructs -- they were originally just another name for specialty priests of Gond (pre-3rd edition), and then became (as noted in the following link) 'steampunk robot sidekicks' of Gondian priests (in 3rd edition).

community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/758...

2) Gondsmen were pretty much isolated to Lantan, which was destroyed during the Spellplague, so even if you do equate Gondsmen with warforged, it's hard to describe how so many of them survive but so little of the rest of Lantan's technology did.

--
Pauper