Changes to Living Forgotten Realms

[SquareKnot]

If there's already a thread about this somewhat old news, please post a reference to it.

As was noted in the thread about "brand revitalization" for Magic and D&D, WotC has recently announced changes to Living Forgotten Realms.

The LFR community lead, Skerrit, posted this blog entry which incited this 20+ page discussion.

To summarize, LFR has been run and supported by WotC. Now it is shifting more to a "community driven" effort. The module authors are no longer paid, the ties to the DCI database are changing, Wizards Play Network is stepping away from it, the number of modules per year is decreasing, LFR is no longer Forgotten Realms canon, ... This is similar to what they did with the D&D Miniatures game -- turned it over to fans with permission to use a lot of the IP but mostly cut any financial investment in it.

This may result in a stronger, better, more story focused LFR or it may be the beginning of the end.

Thoughts?

 

[renau1g]

Yikes.... that sucks. TBH I would be pretty surprised if tons of authors were willing to work for free. After all, why do what you're good at for nothing, you should get paid for it.

 

[Cerebral Paladin]

I expect there will be many authors who are happy to write for free. I've organized authors to create adventures for cons, and people have produced numerous free adventures, many awesome, for me. Back in the day, the RPGA offered both TSR games and non-TSR games, paying for the TSR games but not for the non-TSR games. Both were well represented. People wanted to play Paranoia, Call of Cthulhu, etc., so talented authors who wanted to write games in those worlds would write them without being paid. And it's not like WotC paid that much for RPGA games anyway. I've written some RPGA games, but when they stopped doing Classic style games, I stopped writing for them, because I was more interested in writing the games I wanted to write than in getting a small paycheck from WotC (as awesome as that small paycheck was from an ego perspective).

That said, spinning LFR away from WotC may cause it to fall apart. There won't be the same publicity, it won't be "official," it won't be canon... those will turn off some potential players. On the other hand, eliminating the supervision from WotC and the need to stay canon may give them more freedom, may make the game better. I really think we'll have to wait and see, and that the performance of the volunteers running the campaign will have as much or more to do with its success as the structural factors. If they put out games that players want to play, on time and as promised, and remain a mainstay of convention organizing... it will do fine. If they don't...

 

[MrMyth]

This feels a bit closer in management to how Living Greyhawk worked before LFR - except, at the same time, moving away from some of the lingering elemens like the concepts of regions.

What I suspect is that LFR when it hit was designed to be much more for casual players than LG was. This meant cutting down on elements that really favored those heavily invested in the campaign (like Battle Interactives) and less emphasis on conventions and more on game days.

Now, however, we've got D&D Encounters really filling the role for the casual crowd, and so I think they are letting LFR move away from that a bit. Hence heavier focus on storylines and events, and less worry about being quite as tied to canon. While adding the ability for creating higher level characters or transitioning D&D Encounters Characters to let the other crowd still crossover into it.

I don't know. We'll see how it goes. I think LFR has been very successful, but as a player, it never quite grabbed me the way LG did. The change in direction might fix that, and having it alongside D&D Encounters could potentially make sure there is something for everyone.

 

[Nebten]

In Living Greyhawk, all Regional and Meta-regional modules were written by volunteers of those areas. Those were much better modules with regards to provoking emotion and getting people involved with the "living" aspect of the game. I've played both and it easy to get people involved with LG but LFR never took hold. This is re-enforced by the minimal involvment of LFR in PAX this year.

I think this is just another DDM/Gleemax/e-Tools senario; WotC thinking they can do it all while changing the formula that work and in the end letting somebody else captian the sinking ship.

 

[MrMyth]

In Living Greyhawk, all Regional and Meta-regional modules were written by volunteers of those areas. Those were much better modules with regards to provoking emotion and getting people involved with the "living" aspect of the game. I've played both and it easy to get people involved with LG but LFR never took hold. This is re-enforced by the minimal involvment of LFR in PAX this year.

I think this is just another DDM/Gleemax/e-Tools senario; WotC thinking they can do it all while changing the formula that work and in the end letting somebody else captian the sinking ship.

The big thing I noticed when LFR hit was that our group, which previously was regularly going to gaming conventions for LG events, stopped doing that at all with LFR. However, I also noticed that the local game shops were running LFR nights with 3-4 tables every week, and had a ton of new players coming in and getting into the game.

So I don't think their strategy was a bad thing - it was a different approach, but it was working. And then they rolled out D&D Encounters, which did the same thing - only better. Which means LFR suddenly didn't have a place, and hopefully might now regain some of the deeper connection that previously Living Campaigns cultivated.

 

[Shemeska]

Encounters is the new thing from marketing, so they're cutting LFR loose. That would be my first impression.

My next thought would be that without continued printed support for FR as a setting, it would make sense for them to move away from it towards something just generic 4e PoL since outside of the yearly one setting (which already gets modified for PoL tropes), that's really all that they're putting to print, like it or leave it.

 

[possum]

Taking it out of continuity is a bad thing for me. I've kind of been thinking about submitting a pitch (and getting rejected, LOL) but not having it be in continuity is a deal-breaker for me.

 

[MerricB]

Taking it out of continuity is a bad thing for me. I've kind of been thinking about submitting a pitch (and getting rejected, LOL) but not having it be in continuity is a deal-breaker for me.

I'm pretty sure that being in continuity was a big problem for Wizards...

Cheers!

 

[the Jester]

Taking it out of continuity is a bad thing for me. I've kind of been thinking about submitting a pitch (and getting rejected, LOL) but not having it be in continuity is a deal-breaker for me.

Why?