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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Steve_MND" data-source="post: 6760272" data-attributes="member: 6801314">While these are all fine questions, I think it sidesteps one of the larger issues in the campaign, I feel -- that of a sense of investment.With precious few exceptions, I've found very little to be invested in within the AL campaign as a whole.  Sure, one can come up with personal RP reasons why a character might be tied to the region, but little in the campaign itself provides that anchor.I feel that players don't have much of a reason to be invested in the locale.  The Moonsea is, but all indications, a lousy place to live.  Hard, rough, corrupt.  And the various cities have shown that to be the case.  You start out in Phlan, and I thought, okay, well, a once-great city, under a harsh government, maybe this could be a 'make the city great again' campaign then.But unfortunately, that didn't really happen.  Things went from bad to worse for the town, and largely outside any of the average player's control.  You seldom interacted with the common folk for much, and it was a largely rotating cast of supporting characters -- you helped this one person, and if you were lucky, maybe you interacted with them again in another mod five months down the line.  You didn't feel a lot of sympathy for the city, because there was little emotional connection made.  Most of the players at my store were not all that heartbroken when the season 1 twist came around near the end of the season.And it's largely continued the same way there.  You're shuttled from one lousy, unsympathetic city to the next around the Moonsea.  Nobody I played with cathartically wanted to see the enemies of Mulmaster burn.  Nobody I played with wanted to have anything to do with Hillsfar and their unsavory policies.I can see where the factions were initially designed to be a rallying point around which the players could anchor themselves, cry 'for the Glory of the Lord's Alliance," or some such and set off to do great deeds in their name.  But that almost never happens.  At best, you get a tangentially connected mission that you're going to wander into anyway that amounts basically to "hey, I heard you were going to be in the Village of Gwonk later today, mind if you stop by and milk Goodwife Sander's cow while you're there?"It's all about investment.  Almost every mod, you're introduced to a new, thematically-linked but otherwise unremarkable situation that ties into the current season's metaplot (often in the formula of "cultists aligned with [current season flavor] are up to something no good nearby!  Go see what it is and stop it.  Oh, and don't forget to stop by your Faction Representative on the way out for possible bonus sidequests.").Now I'm exaggerating somewhat for effect, but not as much as I'd hope I would have had to.  Note also that while the writing and adventures have been fun quite often, they are still almost all just 'standalone' episodes.  The metaplot holding them all together is weak, at best.How to change this?  Not sure it can be.  But here's what I would have preferred to have seen:First off, have us in a single location that we can like, feel sympathetic for, and wish to see become prominent and important.  Give us a base of operations that we can call our home, that we can put down roots and that we can fight for the honor of.  Don't have us uproot everything every six months and trek halfway across the Moonsea to the next urbanized cesspool of humanity.Secondly, give us recurring characters that we see and interact with almost every single mod.  We need to get to know people in more than just a single mod or two.  Make the good guys be people we want to protect, and make the ultimate bad guys recurring villains with subtle and grand machinations, and not just the Evil of the Month variety to be washed away as soon as the next season's theme comes around.Thirdly, if you want the Factions to be something notable and worthwhile, give them rivalries.  Make people want to cheer for their Faction.  Make the representatives everpresent and front and center, and make the missions for them amount to something substantial in the mod -- put out some mods that ONLY can be run if there is a member of a specific faction there, and have those be strong and metaplot-altering.Instead of shuttling us across the Moonsea and back, here's what I would have done.  Phlan?  Sure, it's the campaign's home city.  The majority of the AL mods take place around or the once-great city, now reduced to a shell of its former glory.  Have the ruler of the city be good-meaning, but overwhelmed by the corrupt forces working within the town.  The factions are strong and seldom cooperative, and just shy of outright hostile to each other.  The factions are seen virtually every mod, in some fashion, as are certain key NPCs.Let players (and characters) work for the salvation of their city, both from threats within and without.  See the city struggle back to a position of prominence.  First season, the city is beset by forces working for the Dragon Cults.  Have the PCs thwart various activities in and around the city.  Give them regular NPCs that they deal with almost daily.  That way, when they eventually are taken down by some unknown force, there is actual emotion behind the desire to see them avenged.Don't throw the Season 1 twist in like that.  That was a season finale kind of moment, that ended up with no resolution the following season.  Don't uproot the PCs to trek halfway across the Moonsea to fight elemental cultists elsewhere... have the elemental dangers come to them.  Allow them to keep that something, a place, a city, a home that's worth fighting for.Have a larger, more involved plotline that stretches more than just the current six months and reference it at every turn.  Living Greyhawk's regional administrators, when it started, had to submit a five-year metaplot for each of their regions. I seriously doubt that the AL campaign is thinking that far in advance.  With the current WotC Marketing's six-month schedule, I doubt they CAN plan that far in advance.Sorry for the long drawn-out screed here, folks.  I just kinda got caught up in the writing.  And I also understand that there is a big difference between the AL staff, and WotC, and what one can do with or without the other's blessing; take my comments about the campaigns what i would have liked to see as a whole, as opposed to what i would have preferred to see specific people do.TL;DR: The campaign lacks investment.</blockquote>

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