Post/Author/DateTime	Post
lordtiberiusfoxx 12-20-06, 12:41 PM	*Quickly removes shirt for prolonged Jim Kirk speech... rolls diplomacy* Let's focus on the positive for a moment, because I think we need to put things in perspective. I have heard complaints from my fellow players both on these message boards and at the table. While I don't feel that my voice should carry much weight, I think that someone should stand up for the best campaign the RPGA has. I know LG players grumble about Xen'drik. We don't need their approval. Do they have any idea what they are missing? Consider the following... We have DM's marks. This is, by far, the best move that MoH and XE made. You can go to your local DM, talk to them about your character and character history and the roleplaying experiences that you want them to have, and out pops a custom adventure from your DM. Compare this to special missions, which take a long time to approve, take lots of paperwork, and a great deal of the time are extra deadly. So you may have that in-character romance. You may have that special requirement for a prestige class unlocked. You can wrestle a croc. We have responsive factionmasters. If I have an LG question, I'm lucky if I get an answer within a week, and usually the response is laden with sarcasm. Not only do the XE factionmasters try to answer questions kindly and to the best of their ability, but in one case I got a response when I wrote in a question about a mod FOUR HOURS before game time and got an immediate response, saving the table. Eberron is just better. Greyhawk is a fantasy stereotype without a whole lot of flavor. Eberron is steampunk swashbuckling film noir. Which would you rather play? We have action points. I know that some LG players consider this cheating, but I don't know how we play without them anymore. One stray crit from kobold mook #5 at 1st level and a party member is at -9. Is that heroic? No. Can I make every last skill check? No. Does Aragorn miss skill checks? No. Besides, campaign cards stacked high in front of you just look nifty. We have the most liberal character building guidelines. Come all ye ninjas and dread necromancers and find a home in XE. You don't have to wait until 3rd level. You don't have to wait until you get access on an AR. Just put that rad thingy on your expansion list and get the character you want. This campaign has focus. When designing adventures for DM's marks, I can look at the faction, look at the level, and decide relatively accurately what a party is capable of. Can I put in a knowledge check at DC 20+ for Crimson Codex? Yes. Should I do a survival check with the same DC? Probably not. Adventure journals have space to write important details that come up. ARs don't. 'nuff said. Given all of this, is it a wonder why in my game shop that I want to make XE my primary focus for RPGA tables? I don't wonder why. XE is in the right direction, and it would be a very difficult case to make saying otherwise. Tiberius Foxx
heirodule 12-20-06, 03:41 PM	well said. Love greyhawk, but Xen'Drik in particular is filled with adventuring options. Putting a horde of ibixians into a Keoland mod makes no sense.
smerwin29 12-20-06, 03:54 PM	[Shawn runs off to edit a Keoland module.] JUST KIDDING!!
Japangirl 12-20-06, 04:46 PM	*Tries to pretend she is her bard character with +20 diplomacy check* Agree with the positives of Xen'drik, except for the unhelpfulness of the LG boards. Britt has been incredibly responsive since being promoted to the Circle, and most of the players who post are helpful as well. Why the need to defend Xen'drik? On the LG boards, I don't see anyone knocking it. At tables, most people seem to feel it was a great idea. What many people (including myself) don't like about Xen'drik isn't the flavor or the paperwork or the factionmasters or even action points, but the fact that it's not a living campaign. If ever a Living Xen'drik campaign started, I'd play in a heartbeat. But a character that gets level bumped and will be forcibly retired in two years, regardless of how much I play it, just doesn't hold my interest. The database issues at the beginning also hurt the campaign a lot, as many people just stopped playing for awhile and never started again. And while Xen'drik is full of flavor and has incredibly liberal character creation rules and all those goodies, sometimes restrictive campaigns are fun for finding the power that you can within the tight rules. Do I wish some of the restrictions (level 3 for builder books, so much stuff limited, etc) weren't there? Of course. But I still enjoy LG and have become attached to the characters I built for that campaign. And the balance/party capability problem isn't a problem for most tables I play at. As with real life problems, normally there is more than one way to get to where you need to go and to do what you need to do. This is in no way a criticism of Xen'drik, but a defense of LG. The only grumble I have about Xen'drik is that about 90% of rewards cards are useless in LG because they are tailored for Xen'drik and use action points, but that is not the campaign's fault. Why can't we all just get along?
DBlizzard 12-20-06, 05:47 PM	On the LG boards, I don't see anyone knocking it. Now, I don't have any direct interaction with LG players right now (at least I don't discuss the RPGA with them). However, I've heard a lot of anecdotal evidence of LG players griping about the various D&D campaigns. The most notable were stories about LG players at GenCon specifically getting together and playing XE specifically to "ruin the campaign." Yes, this was almost certainly a rarity. However, where there are players who are willing to stoop to this level, there are larger groups with less fanatical, but negative feelings towards the campaign.
Japangirl 12-20-06, 06:35 PM	You've heard anecdotal evidence of LG players griping about other campaigns. Who here has actually heard such complaints? And were they complaints about the way Xen'drik is run that may be valid concerns for players? I heard about the Gencon players trying to ruin Xen'drik, and it is terrible that anyone would do such an immature thing. However to then condemn all LG players who prefer LG for various reasons strikes me as overreacting just a little bit. Have I griped about other campaigns? Yes, but only because of their design. LGR, Eberron, and Xen'drik are all (well, LGR was) short-lived level bump campaigns. They get all the attention but cannot be played nearly as long as a living campaign. All the rewards cards for them become useless after two years (I can't use my Gold Dwarf card from LGR in any campaign, it's a pretty piece of cardboard though I guess) and are useless in LG as well because they require a mechanic that LG doesn't have. Does any of this mean that MoH and XPH are bad campaigns? Of course not. It does mean that given the choice, I'd like to see more RPGA attention given to Living Greyhawk and that I prefer Living Greyhawk to Eberron and Xen'drik because of the way the campaigns are run. Others can and do feel completely differently. LG was the older sibling feeling left out because the new baby is sooo damned cute, and so a bit of sibling rivalry isn't totally unexpected. Animosity now is done, so why the constant need to assert that XPH and MoH are so hated? LG players just don't care anymore, we're used to those campaigns now and they obviously aren't going anywhere. Nor would most of us want them to disappear, as they are an alternative gaming source when we've tapped out TUs and mods for the year. We just want a little more of mommy RPGA's attention, that's all.
DBlizzard 12-20-06, 11:48 PM	However to then condemn all LG players who prefer LG for various reasons strikes me as overreacting just a little bit. I don't think anyone condemned all LG players. I certainly didn't. I was pointing out that the sentiment is out there. Indeed, in some extreme manners (IMO, anyone caught intentionally sabotaging any game should be penalized severely). All the rewards cards for them become useless after two years (I can't use my Gold Dwarf card from LGR in any campaign, it's a pretty piece of cardboard though I guess) and are useless in LG as well because they require a mechanic that LG doesn't have. Well, Xen'drik does have the advantage in that it uses the cards from the Mark of Heroes campaign. That extends the lifespan of those cards (and I understand some cards from LGR campaign can be used in LG).
Randall Montgomery 12-21-06, 11:39 AM	As someone who has been playing both LG and the DnD Campaings for 2+ years now, it seems to me that both campaings have their pros and cons. While I totally agree with the sentiments expressed by the poster, there are some negitives to go along with it. While I understand the need for level bumps in the Campaings, I've never been a fan of them. I've already had my LGR character artificially retired without being able to complete his story, and it's looking like I'll have to say goodbye to my MoH character before he even hits 13th level. Conversely, I've been playing my LG character for the same ammount of time, getting him to 11th level, and have been able to play him in probably 3 times the number of adventures, with another good year or two ahead. It seems to me that this basically sums up the major difference between the two campaings. LG focuses on individual characters, with each person building the story himself out of the modules he chooses to play, while in the Campaings, your character is secondary to a much larger and more tightly constructed story arch that is more or less the same for every person. Neither one of these is necessarilly better than the other, just different. My one major complaint with the Campaings over LG is module availability and retirement. With LG, you have a minimum of a year, and as much as 2, to play any module you want to play, whereas with the Campains you get anywhere from a few weeks to a couple months to play any one module. This largely depends on wheither you're a home game player or going to conventions, as well (I'm really not a fan of expanded premiers). Again, though, this is tied into my previous comments about the focus of the campaings, as the DnD Campaing's overreaching story arch necessitates finishing modules in a certain time so the next can come out, where in LG it dosen't really matter when a mod is played, as it generally only affects your character's perception of time (to a certain extent). However, this is being addressed by the factionmasters, so I'm expecting a much smother release schedule after WF.
Terraneaux 12-26-06, 03:20 AM	I think that Xen'drik is heads and shoulders above LG, but that has heavily to do with an exeprience I had in which my region leaders retroactively changed the regional rules to get my character declared dead. The DM's mark is real great idea, it lets each gaming group differentiate itself while still remaining within the confines of the larger campaign. I just find all of XE to be more accessible to the players; there also seems to be more trust between the admins and the players in the sense that too much of LG seemed to be like 'oh noes, we cant let the players have the goodies otherwise they will totally break everything' and combining that with a series of high-lethality adventures made for a bit of aggravation between the faction leaders and at least the players in my area. My reasons for liking XE have to do with the implementation of a shared campaign rather than the campaign setting itself. Personally I prefer Greyhawk to Eberron (but only slightly) but I find XE to be way more fun both to DM and to play. And of course the look on my cabal players' faces when they ran into a choker lair in my DM's mark was absolutely hilarious....
lordtiberiusfoxx 12-27-06, 01:22 PM	(Wow. Either I rolled high on that diplomacy check or taking off my shirt gave quite a few circumstance bonuses!) The adventure journal also provides another opportunity in establishing character history that just isn't present in other campaigns. Ordinary actions or events can be recorded, which later may affect outcomes. Examples: My Blackwheel company character, with the mark of shadow, learned about one of the other factions. I immediately had the DM write this vital piece of intelligence into my adventure journal. Your character fights a vampire. Rather than have to make a knowledge check every time you fight a vampire, you reference that you encountered a vampire before to identify it. (Although, vampiric weaknesses still require knowledge checks.) A paladin performs a borderline dishonorable act. It, among other actions also recorded in the adventure journal, serves as the stepping stones to change to chaotic good and become a holy liberator. Your swashbuckler falls in love with another PC after much bickering and melodramatic sexual tension. Later, the swashbuckler is charmed and ordered to attack the other character. The DM immediately calls for another will save with a HEAVY circumstance bonus. The enchanter barely has time to panic before finding the pointy end of a rapier in his gut. These things just don't happen in Greyhawk. They certainly happen in home games, but until Xen'drik, never in RPGA games. These things are important, because it makes roleplaying matter, and matter in a positive way through natural character development, not just a chain of mods with an XP and gold total. Because honestly, after coming home from a table, I'd rather say, "my swashbuckler gutted an enchanter after trying to make him attack his true love" than say, "I got 925 xp; just 680 more and I'll get another feat!" Tiberius Foxx