RPGA Opinions

[qstor]

If your concern is too much rules-lawyering and not enough role-playing, I'd suggest looking into some of the RPGA campaigns beyond Living Greyhawk and Legacy of the Green Regent. Now, I'm not saying that there is no role-playing in those campaigns, but they are known for being combat-heavy. Living Force, Living Death, Living Arcanis, Living Spycraft, among others, tend to be more focused on character development and role-play. The downside is that they are smaller campaigns, and thus it can sometimes be difficult to find a local game of anything other than LG.

Hope this helps.

Mike Mistele

I agree with this 100% a lot of the other campaigns particularly Living Death focus on role playing more than LG can at times, again it depends on the DM.

A few of the LG Triad members I've had as DM's are fantastic role players.

Living Dragonstar is ending at the end of the year

Mike

 

[qstor]

If your concern is too much rules-lawyering and not enough role-playing, I'd suggest looking into some of the RPGA campaigns beyond Living Greyhawk and Legacy of the Green Regent. Now, I'm not saying that there is no role-playing in those campaigns, but they are known for being combat-heavy. Living Force, Living Death, Living Arcanis, Living Spycraft, among others, tend to be more focused on character development and role-play. The downside is that they are smaller campaigns, and thus it can sometimes be difficult to find a local game of anything other than LG.

Hope this helps.

Mike Mistele

I agree with this 100%. Living Death in particular is pretty RP intensive. LG can be mixed, but most of the Triad members that I've had as DM's are great role players.

btw its too bad that Living Dragonstar is ending.

Mike

 

[kenobi65]

I agree with this 100%. Living Death in particular is pretty RP intensive. LG can be mixed, but most of the Triad members that I've had as DM's are great role players.

That's cool. Unfortunately, I've heard too many stories about LG players being purely interested in min-maxing their PCs, and being disdainful of players who'd waste valuable play time with "meaningless" role-playing.

btw its too bad that Living Dragonstar is ending.

I'll agree with you there. Living Dragonstar's been one of my favorite campaigns for the past year or so. It's a bit on the wahoo side (probably in large part due to the massive amount of damage that high-tech weapons can do; my wizard has a certed blaster rifle that does 4d10+8 damage), but it's been fun, and I love my character.

There are folks working to try to keep Living Dragonstar going (among other things, an Australian game company is apparently proposing to license the setting from Fantasy Flight Games), but it's still very unclear if it'll happen.

Mike

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

That's cool. Unfortunately, I've heard too many stories about LG players being purely interested in min-maxing their PCs, and being disdainful of players who'd waste valuable play time with "meaningless" role-playing.

Heh. I disdain wasting my time with meaningless role-playing in RPGA games or anywhere else. Meaningful role-playing on the other hand is an entirely different matter. I think of meaningless role-playing as the constant emoting of schtick--really, obnoxious stereotypical characters are fine but once you've established that your character is a %^&, tone it down, will you and the portions of a module where you can wander around and "investigate" things but can't uncover anything useful and you'd just as meaningfully effect the world if you sat in the bar and had a drink. Other categories of meaningless roleplaying: "cool, we'll get a limo and we'll go to the bar to celebrate. I put on some duds and are there any chicks there, I want to do them---DM: make a charisma check...sure (to everyone else, it looks like he's hitting on a guy to you)...." or "My druid excoriates the party yet again for being on a mission he doesn't care about because he's a druid and doesn't like people and doesn't care about anything except the animals."

OTOH, I appreciate meaningful role-playing where characters have to make significant choices the answers to which are not obvious. For instance, do you sell the elf-bane weapon to the evil lord who's going to duel with a half-elf paladin next week? (Or do you even care enough to ask questions about the man who's buying it). If you're told about his nature and plans, will you break the deal? Or, if you discover that the general is embezzling money to finance the city's defenses after his funds have been cut, do you cover for him or turn him in. If the Inquisitor tells you to back off because he wants to round up the whole cult, do you let the scuzzbucket aristocrat you were trying to rescue die or do you tell the Inquisition to pike off? Even "you find a book full of forbidden, blasphemous knowledge, do you read it?" is meaningful role-playing.