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AL VS LFR of 4th and why I'm so disappointed
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<blockquote data-quote="Pauper" data-source="post: 6810997" data-attributes="member: 17607"><p>Talking about your own experience is good and valid, and I can't really say that you're wrong to do so. With that said, I think you're emphasizing certain things and downplaying others in a way that makes LFR look better than it was and makes AL look worse by comparison. Cases in point:</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>When LFR started it was a well-funded, intensely-supported program. Not only were there numerous regions with authors being paid to publish adventures in each region, but there were lots of little bonus add-ons provided by WotC as well. (If you ever heard or spoke the phrase, "Is there a +2 on the board?" then you participated in one of the first two seasons of LFR.) Even then, the quality of the adventures in different regions varied significantly -- I always felt the Waterdeep region was one of the best (and one of the folks running that region is currently on the AL admin team), while East Rift and Impiltur were...not as high quality.</p><p></p><p>By the end of Season 2, though, the cracks were showing. More and more adventures were late being released, and some were never released at all, including the entire second season of the Baldur's Gate region. Season 3 saw the regions collapse down to a more workable number, and WotC started withdrawing support for LFR in favor of the new Encounters program. Still, what remained was stronger, with a core of volunteers driving the quality of the program. A good number of those folks are still involved in OP today.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Again, I think you're comparing apples to oranges here -- many of the 'title' boons were enabled in later season adventures, and (IMO anyway) a lot of them were cheapened by relaxing their requirements significantly. (One of the boons went from requiring 7 supporting story awards to requiring 2, as an example.)</p><p></p><p>AL appears to be offering faction mentorship as their first 'title boon', and other factions and benefits are available too, such as membership in the Cloaks of Mulmaster. With the guidelines in the DMG, I wouldn't be surprised if more such boons became available in later seasons.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>One person's 'cool flavorful character concepts' is another person's 'broken character that takes all the fun out of the game session'. I've more than once told the story of the laser cleric at my table at the first Adventuring Company adventure at GenCon who basically soloed the entire module, leaving the rest of us wondering why we were even at the table.</p><p></p><p>I am deeply appreciative of the admin team's efforts to keep munchkinism and character optimization to a minimum in AL, and I suspect many other players would thank them as well if they had any idea of how bad an unrestricted environment could get. (*cough*non-core Pathfinder Society*cough*).</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>MyRealm was an interesing, if flawed concept -- the first few modules I played in and wrote were motivated by a desire to explore areas of the Realms and parts of the main story that I felt were underdeveloped by the campaign itself, but as time went on, it became clear that most folks, at least in my area, who continued using MyRealms were using it either to shoe-horn their own campaigns into an LFR structure, or to simply provide XP and treasure farms that could be quickly run to power-level characters for big con events.</p><p></p><p>There are numerous arguments to be made both in favor and against MyRealms style content in AL, but at the moment, I don't think you can authorize such modules to be uploaded to the DMs Guild, which basically breaks the concept. I don't expect to see the return of MyRealms while the DMs Guild exists.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Just because a Battle Interactive *could* be played at a local con doesn't mean that it was *good* when run at a local con -- the biggest challenge, as with AL currently, was finding enough DMs who were both competent enough to provide a fun game experience and committed enough to stick to running the events while only able to play them in minimal 'slot zero' games. Our local BIs went from six to two tables by the end, which took a lot of the 'interactive' out of the 'battle interactive'.</p><p></p><p>I can't tell you you're wrong to be disappointed in AL, but I can point out that you're comparing a somewhat make-believe version of LFR to a program that was at least in part designed to compensate for the limitations of LFR, not necessarily to maintain every strength it had.</p><p></p><p>--</p><p>Pauper</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Pauper, post: 6810997, member: 17607"] Talking about your own experience is good and valid, and I can't really say that you're wrong to do so. With that said, I think you're emphasizing certain things and downplaying others in a way that makes LFR look better than it was and makes AL look worse by comparison. Cases in point: When LFR started it was a well-funded, intensely-supported program. Not only were there numerous regions with authors being paid to publish adventures in each region, but there were lots of little bonus add-ons provided by WotC as well. (If you ever heard or spoke the phrase, "Is there a +2 on the board?" then you participated in one of the first two seasons of LFR.) Even then, the quality of the adventures in different regions varied significantly -- I always felt the Waterdeep region was one of the best (and one of the folks running that region is currently on the AL admin team), while East Rift and Impiltur were...not as high quality. By the end of Season 2, though, the cracks were showing. More and more adventures were late being released, and some were never released at all, including the entire second season of the Baldur's Gate region. Season 3 saw the regions collapse down to a more workable number, and WotC started withdrawing support for LFR in favor of the new Encounters program. Still, what remained was stronger, with a core of volunteers driving the quality of the program. A good number of those folks are still involved in OP today. Again, I think you're comparing apples to oranges here -- many of the 'title' boons were enabled in later season adventures, and (IMO anyway) a lot of them were cheapened by relaxing their requirements significantly. (One of the boons went from requiring 7 supporting story awards to requiring 2, as an example.) AL appears to be offering faction mentorship as their first 'title boon', and other factions and benefits are available too, such as membership in the Cloaks of Mulmaster. With the guidelines in the DMG, I wouldn't be surprised if more such boons became available in later seasons. One person's 'cool flavorful character concepts' is another person's 'broken character that takes all the fun out of the game session'. I've more than once told the story of the laser cleric at my table at the first Adventuring Company adventure at GenCon who basically soloed the entire module, leaving the rest of us wondering why we were even at the table. I am deeply appreciative of the admin team's efforts to keep munchkinism and character optimization to a minimum in AL, and I suspect many other players would thank them as well if they had any idea of how bad an unrestricted environment could get. (*cough*non-core Pathfinder Society*cough*). MyRealm was an interesing, if flawed concept -- the first few modules I played in and wrote were motivated by a desire to explore areas of the Realms and parts of the main story that I felt were underdeveloped by the campaign itself, but as time went on, it became clear that most folks, at least in my area, who continued using MyRealms were using it either to shoe-horn their own campaigns into an LFR structure, or to simply provide XP and treasure farms that could be quickly run to power-level characters for big con events. There are numerous arguments to be made both in favor and against MyRealms style content in AL, but at the moment, I don't think you can authorize such modules to be uploaded to the DMs Guild, which basically breaks the concept. I don't expect to see the return of MyRealms while the DMs Guild exists. Just because a Battle Interactive *could* be played at a local con doesn't mean that it was *good* when run at a local con -- the biggest challenge, as with AL currently, was finding enough DMs who were both competent enough to provide a fun game experience and committed enough to stick to running the events while only able to play them in minimal 'slot zero' games. Our local BIs went from six to two tables by the end, which took a lot of the 'interactive' out of the 'battle interactive'. I can't tell you you're wrong to be disappointed in AL, but I can point out that you're comparing a somewhat make-believe version of LFR to a program that was at least in part designed to compensate for the limitations of LFR, not necessarily to maintain every strength it had. -- Pauper [/QUOTE]
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