Changes or No Changes

[Pauper]

That's not how I recall this story award. IIRC you could immediately continue to play this character and just had to assume that you spend some time in captivity until you were rescued.

I have the story award from the original printing of the adventure, where your character was removed from play, but it appears the award was modified later -- the version of the award contained within the module on livingforgottenrealms.com (SPEC 3-3) does specify that the character isn't removed from play.

So I guess going that route would still possibly be controversial. I personally would like the option.

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Pauper

 

[DocSharpe]

What if character play them out of order? No more S4 adventures if you played the escape adventure first with your 5th level PC, since entering another one means you won't be able to make T3 and never get out.

You only touch on the primary problem. The Expedition modules are not all released at once. Many are tied to release dates at cons, others are later in the storyline. So when a store runs through all the available modules for the season, they can rerun the content from previous seasons. We are months into Season Three, and there are...4 (?) Tier 1 adventures.

"Locking" characters into another realm is going to cause no end of grief for the people trying to run the league...especially because the people who *are* paying attention to that are going to be the loudest. What might work is to have the Encounters session be the "locked in Ravenloft" scenario, and the Expeditions limited to the effects of Ravenloft's touch on the Realms. (It might even support the unspoken desire many DMs have for Encounter-based PCs not to play Expeditions in between sessions.)

 

[kalani]

That is an excellent idea. The downside however, is that for it to work - WotC (and their partners) would need to publish a hardcover ravenloft adventure (as Encounters makes use of the hardcover adventures). As the admins have no say when it comes to these (hardcover) adventures, their input would mean little. Ultimately we (the campaign staff) only have a say when it comes to Expeditions and Epics (and even then, there is an approval process by HQ)

 

[Pauper]

The downside however, is that for it to work - WotC (and their partners) would need to publish a hardcover ravenloft adventure (as Encounters makes use of the hardcover adventures).

As I read Skerrit's question, he's specifically talking about the admins creating Ravenloft Expeditions modules; this would be unrelated to any Encounters season going on simultaneously.

Though as you note, any such things would need to be approved by the WotC team. For that reason, I'd expect to see more call-outs and references to Ravenloft than an actual Ravenloft adventure (there were a few such call-outs in LFR, including an entire year of the Epic campaign given over to a former Ravenloft darklord as the villain).

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Pauper

 

[skerritthegreen]

As I read Skerrit's question, he's specifically talking about the admins creating Ravenloft Expeditions modules; this would be unrelated to any Encounters season going on simultaneously.

Not really talking about Ravenloft at all (its just the distraction caused by the ENWorld article that got me thinking), but rather what are things that are expected/sacrosanct and what are things that might be tried.

 

[Pauper]

Not really talking about Ravenloft at all (its just the distraction caused by the ENWorld article that got me thinking), but rather what are things that are expected/sacrosanct and what are things that might be tried.

Ah, fair enough -- so the real question is, what's too much of a sacred cow not to be changed?

Ideally, nothing. If the campaign doesn't take risks and try different things, it's just going to get stale and be more of the same-old same-old after a while. This may be a good thing for the folks who haven't yet gotten involved (for which it's all new regardless), but at some point you're going to get an exodus of existing players who are tired of doing the same old thing over and over again.

Since Chris Perkins likes to use Blizzard as an example, we can talk about World of Warcraft -- how many folks are former WoW players? That wasn't such a big deal when there were still plenty of people who hadn't tried it, and thus old players getting bored with the game could be easily replaced, but the marginal cost of replacing those players gets higher all the time, to the point where WoW, despite still being one of, if not the the biggest MMO out there, isn't anywhere near where it was when it appeared it would be the giant game that would last forever.

Given that AL has very little budget to allocate toward that rising marginal cost of attracting new players, I think the campaign is best advised to keep the existing game fresh so that current players are less likely to leave from boredom, as well as recommend the game to others to keep the fresh players coming in.

That's my $0.02US. Of course, you may know all that and are more looking for specific examples of what kinds of things to try. Might I recommend a Ravenloft season? ; )

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Pauper

 

[skerritthegreen]

Might I recommend a Ravenloft season? ; )

You can recommend all you want, but as you know, we don't have any power to make it so. You'd need to talk to WOTC.

 

[Pauper]

You'd need to talk to WOTC.

Seems like the WotC people that go to conventions are not the same WotC people as are listed in the modules as the 'WotC AL team'. I suppose I could send an e-mail to CustServ...

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Pauper

 

[Cascade]

In a close knit society, multiple exclusive paths would work.

In a open access, public world, I don't see how it can. You simply dont want to turn away players and those rules would largely go ignored....causing issues elsewhere.

As far as magic, early in the campaign there was a lot of angst about magic but lately in the region I'm mostly gaming in, magic items are less important than good story. I think the minor aspects of the magic items to date (the flavour) is far more appealing the "pick an item and you have it" route.

Minor changes, specifically added content is good. Exclusions that come into being, imho, are bad. i.e. player sits down with some one else and sees a cool race...and why cant I play that? just because its expired? bad choice.

I'm opposed to major campaign changes. 3 years in, the campaign with very limited rules seems to be holding steady in a very fickle world where video game platforms last only 3 months after millions of dollars spent.

Anything that adds story or flavor is good. Multiple round stories could be done; 4 part series with 1-3 in any order but 4 should be last could work. Rewards that reflect series completion play are nice and hopefully part and parcel to the story itself.

TL;DR As a customer, I've liked what I,ve seen...Im not interested in major changes.

 

[Will Doyle]

Chronology in organized play is by definition incredibly wishy washy, with many different characters replaying the same adventures completely out of order, so why bother having strict rules about it?

Absolutely this.