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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Steve_MND" data-source="post: 6760557" data-attributes="member: 6801314">It's unfortunate that WotC wants people to be moving around so much, and equally unfortunate that they want them moving around so often as well.  A year-long season would be so much better, IMHO, to establishing a story than the six-months versions we have, but then that wouldn't fit in as well with WotC's marketing plans.There's a difference between Faction Rivalry and Faction Conflict.  It was easy to see how the Factions were originally envisioned as the equivalent of, say, LG's various regions.  A metagroup that one could feel some connection to, that one could feel proud when they triumphed, and feel sad about when they faltered.  But I don't see that as happening with the Factions in AL.  At best, our faction mission briefing is three or four sentences about what we have to do, and, as mentioned before, is really only vaguely associated with the module itself.  If you didn't do it, or didn't have any Factioned characters at the table, the mod would continue without even skipping a beat.  That's fine in and of itself, but that's a sure indicator that the Factions, as currently implemented, are really completely expendable and irrelevant to the campaign.  In fact, I can't think of hardly a single module where it would have been significantly different if there were no Factions present at all in the game world.  Sure, maybe a few sidequests would have not been written, but that'd be about all.  As others have pointed out, Factions are often an afterthought for many players, because there's no real reason for them.And for the record, Faction-specific mods would be fine to have in the campaign, if handled properly.  Again, rivalry, not conflict.  They can still be working to a common goal, just through different means.  In current mods, if there is a sidemission for the Enclave, that typically doesn't preclude the other non-Enclave characters from assisting those characters, and so on.  Same thing could be done with Faction-specific modules.Understandable, but woefully inadequate for a campaign of this scope, IMHO.  The very fact that you only know the "general theme" of what's 2 seasons out is disappointing, because you cannot create a decent metaplot without knowing the long term goals and situations.  Again, not 'you' as in the AL staff, just 'you' as in the AL campaign as a whole.  I am well aware of the sort of limitations and restrictions that WotC is putting in place on a lot of these things (which just goes back to my overall opinion I've made before that the campaign isn't structured properly by WotC).Well, among several other ideas, you can have overlapping arcs.  Example: first Dragon arc has elements that lead towards the overall metagoal.  You run that through a year-long arc, tho.  But six months in, you start up the Elemental arc, which has elements that also lead towards the overall metagoal, but which has its own year-long arc and runs parallel with the previous Dragon arc.  Next, you pull in the new Underdark arc after the Dragon arc is finished , but the Elemental arc is still going strong.  And so on.  That way, regardless of when you come in, there's generally a new arc that new players can glom onto without having to have a Masters in League Theory, but you also have larger themes operating so long-time players feel a sense of continuity and cohesive progression.  The trick is in the weaving of those separate arcs into the larger metaplot, like one weaves separate cords into a larger, stronger rope.But again, that sort of approach needs a wider scale of operation to work than just the six-months-out window that the campaign seems to be operating at.The PCs are already basically just helping out the campaign's seasonal stories as tag-alongs anyway; we shouldn't kid ourselves that this is like a home campaign where the players can have a direct influence on where the campaign goes and what happens on a larger scale.  If that were the case, we'd already have left the Moonsea behind a long time ago, I'd wager.  But while we may be along for the ride, it would be nice if that ride had more familiar faces along the way (and they were familiar faces that we actually care about).I'm not saying that doesn't happen here and there (a certain goat-acquainted little girl springs to mind) but it doesn't happen often or deep enough, IMHO, to make a noticeable effect.  And certainly not with the Factions, which were -- presumably -- intended to be the rallying point around which characters would anchor themselves to in a shifting, chaotic campaign.</blockquote>

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