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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ariosto" data-source="post: 5147754" data-attributes="member: 80487">For RPGA LFR, they wanted to have the particularity of a player's personal characters. With no guaranteed continuity of players or characters, an extended plot line did not make much sense. So, they went for one-session scenarios that don't require any continuity.As I mentioned in another thread, that element of ad hoc parties, formed from a large pool of players each with a bullpen of characters, is familiar from "the old days". It's something I think is often missed in discussions of "balance" that take for granted the monolithic party advancing in lockstep.In my experience, the table gets to choose a scenario from those available. So, there's an element of player choice.A notable point: In LFR, the party (at least in terms of players) forms first, and afterward comes selection of scenario. If it is feasible, I think it pretty desirable in a "sandbox" campaign for players to get their plans together -- and notify the referee of them -- ahead of the session. That seems to help avoid some of the headaches that seem often to worry people.Once into the scenario, though, options are very limited. As I think Raven Crowking may have observed earlier, when one looks at why players' interactions with the world are of little significance, one reason is the limitations on player freedom.When we capture a pirate ship, we are not allowed to sail off in it because -- as in a video game -- that would take us out of the scenario and so effectively over "the edge of the world". Of course, neither can we keep it for use in a later scenario.Nor can we stay in a place, and we are not likely to return to one to see the changes we have wrought, because we cannot really make changes. The place would only ever be however a writer dictated it should be for the next scenario, regardless of our efforts. So, instead, it is perpetually returned to its initial state like the town in the movie Groundhog Day. (Also as in the movie, or in a video game, players can keep practicing to get "the solution" down pat. They just need to keep bringing different characters.)There is nothing personal about the scenarios. We are merely choosing from a menu a complete "package deal", more like tourists than like daring captains. Instead of plotting and scheming, we conform to someone else's plot scheme.Nor are there many significant choices even in the progress of the very linear scenario. Almost all the import of an encounter, barring character death, is self-referential. The real game is at that level, each encounter basically a game unto itself.Or perhaps the real game is at the character "build" level, and all the rest is rather as the rounds of combat tend to be in old D&D: feedback on the quality of the really significant and strategic choices. In the old game, those were on the rather dramatic order of whether to fight in the first place.In the new one, the focus seems to be at the two ends of choosing which powers to "build into" a character, and which power to use this round. I know those are really the bee's knees to many people, but to me they are more like trivia cluttering the way back to the really interesting choices.</blockquote>

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