I was talking to a friend who wants us to get into LFR, and thought it might be cool to give it a go. My problem comes from seeing an old adventure (levels 1-3) where the total XP award is only about half of what is needed to go from level 1 to level 2. How then is a new player suppose to get to the level 4-7 adventure that comes next in the chain for their area? Are we suppose to just play the same adventure again and again, until we reach level 4? If so, then doesn't that lead to cheating the reward system for a particular adventure? Or are we suppose to travel to distant regions and play adventures for our level that way?
Hiya!
There are a few things that aren't obvious at first. One: there's more than one adventure in your region for each level band. For example, both DALE 1-1 and DALE 1-7 are for characters of level 1-4. The numbers identifying each adventure don't mean you have to play them in order or anything.
Second, you absolutely aren't limited to adventures in your region. You can play adventures from any region; there's no time units and no reason not to play adventures from all over the place.
You're correct that a single adventure won't contain enough XP to get you to 2nd level, much less 4th. In general, you can expect that it'll take 2-3 standard, one-round adventures to gain a new level.
So, this does mean that it's simply not possible to advance a character very far by sticking to adventures from only one region. Yes, the assumption is that the character will be traveling from region to region in order to advance (though there's no need for the player to actually travel
).Hope this helps!
Since we just recently started, I only have 2 groups to run (on alternating schedules) and was curious how to bring it all together while making sure the players continue to advance. I could easily make them "travel the world" in search of adventure, but am kinda concerned about tying in the various adventures (needed to give them enough XP for gaining their levels) with the final Adventure that the campaign is destined for.
Is there someplace I can dig through the various story-lines of the different adventures, to find those best suited to my campaign? Or at least a way that I introduce my own challenges for the PCs to encounter while they are traveling, and still retain the characters being legal for play at sanctioned events (like Pax-East) outside our venue. I really want to get all this cleared up early, because we are getting more people coming by showing interest & I will need to be able to keep this intact as I get more DMs lined up for the new groups.
Keith
The three lines quoted come from a completely outside perspective. I had to really look and think to even figure out what was meant.
kinda concerned about tying in the various adventures
Adventures don't "tie together", you just play them. Some few adventures link directly from one to the next, but in general adventures are flung willy-nilly across the Realms.
It is possible to write your own connecting adventures using the MYRE (My Realms) framework, but I suspect that if you were serious about maintaining this level of verisimilitude you would quickly a) run out of ideas to get people across the Realms yet again and b) burn out.
Living campaign regulars, with a small number of exceptions I assume, don't consider this a big issue. We just play them as they come up without asking a lot of "Why am I in this country, when I was just halfway around the world?" questions.
final Adventure that the campaign is destined for.
There is no such thing, at least from the current perspective, as a "final Adventure" for the campaign. If the campaign administration has something specific in mind, which I highly doubt, they certainly aren't sharing. At this point, the only way to think about things is to consider the campaign "indefinitely ongoing" with no endpoint in sight.
my campaign?
It's not your campaign. It's our campaign (I say this including you in the "us"). The way that you are trying to run this is admirable, and would make for a perfectly nice regular independent gaming experience, but it doesn't fit with how LFR works.
You want to know how a normal, experienced group plays LFR? Here's the gist of it.
1) DM rotation. The group, using whatever method they prefer, selects a DM schedule. Whether it is the same guy every week, or a detailed list created at the start, or a last minute volunteer, or whatever.
2) Adventure selection. The group, using whatever method they prefer, selects an adventure schedule. In the case, like yours, where a single DM/organizer is in charge, that person selects adventures according to the cirteria of their choice. Sometimes players, knowing details about adventures either from previous play (you can play an adventure more than once these days) or from finding spoilers online, will request specific adventures. Sometimes a group, knowing about upcoming linked stroylines, will offer adventures in an order most likely to maximize the links available. What happens most commonly, I suspect, is that the group simply selects a level-appropriate adventure more or less randomly, based solely on what's new and/or available.
3) Actual play. The group actually follows the printed adventure, without any particular interstitial linkage from the previous adventure to this one. Take a look at the Player Introduction section of any adventure you like. This is where regular LFR groups start. It is uncommon for either players or DMs to ask the question "why am I in this region", we just take it as a given and move on the the adventure.
The point I'm trying to make is this: the LFR experience is wildly, vastly different from the traditional home campaign that new people might be familiar with. There are plenty of individual elements that are common to both (getting hired in a tavern, getting ambushed in the woods, exploring exotic dungeons, etc.), but the framework these elements are contained within is so dramatically different as to practically be a different game.
LFR is an indefinite campaign, meaning it does not have a predefined, finite life span, and a final adventure (unlike say Living Death). The current model is adventures will be continually produced for all tiers, and players will advance and eventually retire characters, and start new characters.
Keith
thank you this is all very helpful. i think i am going to try LFR next time there is an event i can get to.
I hope you enjoy it!