Sorry, but you've lost me. Do you mean the fact you can't escape the domain and how that means you can't just hop between adventures?
Yes, the idea that you can take your character to any AL-legal table, anywhere in the world, and sit down and play any AL-legal mod. That portability is one of the core concepts behind the development of what we now call "Organized Play' (as opposed to home games people might run). The Ravenloft Lock meant that otherwise viable characters were prevented from being able to be played in other modules. If you had a 6th-level character in Ravenloft, for example, and the convention/gameday/whatever you were at was playing a Mid-Tier Season Two mod that you had not played in before, you could not play in that now. Previously, that had not been an issue.
I can see where, in your situation, this would be an issue, but I don't see this as a problem with the season as a whole.
Well, I happen to view portability as one of the main tenets that Organized Play is supposed to be built around, and once you start getting rid of that, you're crippling the entire idea behind why OP was created in the first place. Of course, my origins in OP stem from the heyday of the RPGA, some 20 years ago, so while I'll admit that times change, I won't agree that getting rid of portability in an entire season is good for the health of any OP campaign. Case in point: Season 4 has managed to drop our attendance at AL games down to about half of what it once was, and while I am sure our relatively small gaming population might have exacerbated the issue, I cannot legitimately imagine that our store is the only one in the country that's had that same problem.
The obvious solution is to create characters specifically for Season 4 -- which isn't much of a stretch, as each season starts out with a level 1-2 mod exclusive to it which assumes you're starting a new character for that season already.
Sorry, I thought the context was there to make it clear that it wasn't so much the first half of the season that was the main problem (altho you may be surprised at how few players want to just 'play a character' if they don't think they'll ever be able to do anything with them again). I was referring more to the latter half, where we had a number of potential players with earlier mid-tier characters that could have joined in, had the season's portability been the same as earlier ones. But since several of them had erratic work schedules, etc., they didn't want to risk playing a favorite character only to have it likely locked for who-knows-how-long just because they missed the module(s) that allowed them to leave. Again, some other options were added near the end of the season, but for several of our players, it was too little too late for them to bother with.
And honestly, between the execution of Season Four and our less-than-impressive dealings with Baldman at this summer's GenCon, most of the 'core group' of gamers in our area are moving more towards other, indie games and campaigns. And as mentioned before, while I admit our relatively small population might have exacerbated the issue, I cannot legitimately imagine that our gamers are the only ones that are having those same concerns.
The advantage of such a system is that it purported to solve one of the major issues with the Season 3 hardcover -- if you were playing Out of the Abyss, the campaign rules explicitly allowed you to visit a shop or other location between adventures to purchase gear, which, unless the DM enforced a rule preventing it, basically defeated the purpose of the 'survival horror' aspect of the hardcover module. If anything, the 'trapped in Barovia' mechanic didn't go far enough, because even though the characters couldn't leave Barovia, there are still locations in Barovia that the PCs can use to resupply using the generic AL rule on re-equipping between adventures, thus side-stepping things like the 'You Murderer!' story award meant to penalize players for thoughtless violence.
See, I don't have a problem with the 'survival horror' aspect of it. I understand Ravenloft, and I understand the importance of the Mists, etc. I agree with all of that. That said, that very exclusionary nature of the setting said to me that "hey, this is a poor choice of setting to add to an already existing, ongoing campaign, as no-one likes when the rules are changed out from underneath them." I also understand that AL is just a marketing arm of WotC, and so they have to focus around whatever seasonal product WotC is pushing out as their latest hardcover. It's an awkward, narrow edge the campaign is forced to walk, and i do not envy the people that have to make those decisions at all, because there is no black-and-white choice.
A similar situation occurred in the previous Season with the Madness rules being introduced. Lovecraftian horror is great, and a favorite of mine. But adding such elements in the middle of an ongoing campaign, have it sweep through like some horrific windstorm, be dangerous and game-changing on a most fundamental level, and then disappear just as quickly as it arrived, is, in my personal opinion, a poor choice for any campaign, Organized or not. Fundamental concepts like that deserve to be integrated at the start of any particular campaign, and last through it fully, and not just be thrown in as some 'game mechanic flavor of the week' sort of situation.
I would have much rather seen, instead of trying to link each of these 'weekly flavors' they'd have just created a new, separate standalone campaign for that season. i would have loved to have seen a fully-Underdark campaign. I would have loved to have seen a fully-Ravenloft campaign. In the future I would love to see a fully-Spelljammer campaign, or a fully-Planescape campaign, or a fully-Athas campaign. But I do not, and would not, like to see them all crammed together into the current single monolithic AL campaign that started five seasons ago.
But of course, I also realize that's not going to be viable under the current operation of the campaign, since WotC and Hasbro has their own requirements out of AL. In fact, in a way, I can kind of see that that is how things are slowly moving -- handing Baldman the 'core' stuff to do with on their own, and then freeing up WotC to do their own flavor of the week stuff as they see fit. Two problems (in my eyes) being that the campaign is still, in theory, all still interchangeable and not separate, and that it's Baldman who is heading up the 'core' bits.
Time will see if either of those sort themselves out, but I don't know if that many of us have that much time and interest, especially as other things start looming on the horizon now that the first non-WotC 5th edition settings are starting to appear.
Again, I know that there are issues that I have that others don't, and that there are things I like that others don't, and things I hate that others don't. All I can do is explain my reasoning to those that are capable of listening and potentially sending info up the chain of command (looking at you, AL admins) and hope that they take it into consideration -- along with everyone else's -- when the next time for changes come around.
) wasn't deeply grounded in story, background, atmosphere and theme.
