Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 MacEochaid Aug 03, 2014 22:47:57	I'm curious to know, are they planning to realease Factions as a module outside of Adventurer's League?   It seems to be building off of Backgrounds as PC NPC Glue.   I like this since the old Paragon Paths tried to do two things at once. Some like Daggermaster gave you a mechanical bonus to represent abilities while others like Keepers of the Cerulean Sign tried to give more of a story-telling function.    I think seperating these out makes a lot of sense and I hope that they can work out a balance where the former types become feats and the later are able to be somewhat controlled by the DM, used as hook and system for reward delivery based on quests.
#2 Hebitsuikaza Aug 05, 2014 14:25:09	Hmmm...   Any other location besides Waterdeep and certainly any other world beside Faerun would have vastly different factions than the ones presented in the Adventure League. It is all in all fairly disapointing to even anything to do with factions, particularly in what they are and how they are presented in the Adventurer League.   In fact, they don't even feel like factions. Each one is so very class-centric that it seems like one's class is automatically going to determine their faction orientation. And, also, it seems like the factions would only include one or two classes as anything more than token members. A well-made faction would be detailed and interesting enough on its own without referencing class tropes that one could imagine all or nearly all classes being full contributing members.   This rather simple thing suggests that all D&D organized play games are not only going to necessarily take place in one particular D&D setting, casting all other possibilities to the wind, but they are anchoring themselves to be based around one particular city in that one particular game world.   Yes, I understand that their MMORPG and the top selling games they had created by BioWare were based around this one city, but... why continue being so laser-focused on that one location?   Why not relaunch akin to Dragonlance? Does anyone really think anything was inherently magical or special about Dragonlance that it can never be duplicated? Why not?   You create a brand new D&D world with its own unique takes on the various PC races, maybe one or two that are unique to that world, you set up an epic, organized, deadly force of villainy, you have your cast of stock character heroes with the full understanding that anyone running the adventures can substitute in their own heroes.... and then you run the whole thing as a big epic metaplot. Have DMs fill out surveys detailing how their players responded to the various challenges in the adventure, which NPCs they allied themselves with and so forth. Have a writer on staff who will churn out regular stories about how the stock characters made it through each adventure a few weeks after each adventure is released for organized play. The stock characters would more or less follow through on the most popular ways PCs tackled the adventure.   Novels could be sold detailing big epic events that involve another cast of characters that are the novelist's own and their actions shape the overall metaplot just as much as the adventures themselves and would actually foreshadow what sort of adventures are going to be coming because the PCs are going to have to deal with the reprecussions of what happens in the novels just as the novels are affected by the bi-monthly adventures of the stock characters.   All of it could culiminate over the course of a couple years to a big epic 20+ level final adventure. Afterwards the final epilogue novel would come out that would deal with the novel characters' final battles and the ultimate epilogue of the destruction of the epic evil and how the world changes in the aftermath and could even lead to the rise of a new world threat, perhaps coming from an unexpected source (the stock or novel characters or the people they protected or empowered along the way).   You could even divide characters into various competing factions that, while all united against the epic evil faction, are themselves cut-throat in their competition against one another. In which case, particularly if more than one adventure league adventure is being released a month, there could be a group of stock characters from each faction and voting would determine which group of stock characters is written about undertaking the adventure.   It may seem like a lot.... but AEG manages to handle it with their L5R franchise. And they are a much smaller company.   It would be a far more community-oriented, driven, intense and involved project that would get gamers really intensely involved in the hobby and have them buying up lots of product in order to keep abreast of every shred of the story and artwork or models of their favorite characters from the metaplot.   But centering the adventure league around an over-used, over-saturated city where everything interesting that could happen has already happened where ultimately the status quo is king and dividing players neatly into  a handful or barely distinguishable, vanilla, uninteresting factions that only really apply to that one vanilla, boring, status quo city?   That strikes me as a totally fruitless endeavor.
#3 CelticPaladin Aug 05, 2014 14:40:12	There is a mysterious Adventurer's Hanbook on the horizon, and the Mearls is being coy about...