Living Forgotten Realms: A Review
Living Forgotten Realms, one of Wizards of the Coast’s biggest efforts this year hasn’t gotten a lot of attention, but is certainly bringing in players in my area. Wizards has declared it a success, they say it has drawn more players than any previous campaign, local players with long RPGA memories agree. Largely beneath the radar Wizards is releasing four adventures a month for the campaign and has been doing this since last summer giving them a large pool of dedicated adventures. The games can be played in by private groups and in game shops, with special adventures for conventions being released as well. I will be reviewing the campaign first from a players point of view, I will talk about it from a DM’s perspective in a later post.
Starting Out
Starting out in Living Forgotten Realms is normally pretty easy, you generate a character at first level and start playing. Wotc has a calendar of events that is searchable, local shops often have games posted and games are even available online. There are some campaign rules that are good to know before you start play, they are sadly hidden in Wotc’s massively messed up website and surrounded by out dated and misleading information, but if you have questions the forums are excellent and friendly. If you have the D&D Insider Character Generator it can be set to generate legal Living Forgotten Realms PCs, and it is useful for tracking character adventures as you play them using the Journal, which is set up in Living Forgotten Realms format. Overall in my area it was very easy to get started thanks to veteran RPGA players in the local group, it would be much tougher to start up cold with just the Wotc site to help.
The Adventures
The adventures are free to the DMs and are of mixed quality, some are very plain, some are very good. Many of the early modules were written before any Forgotten Realms information was published and they show it in a lack of flavor. They are straight up Dungeon Delves with little connecting them to the Forgotten Realms at all, Akan1-1 The Rotting Ruins of Galain is the poster boy for this. That said, played with a good DM Akan1-1 and the others can still be fun and many DMs will work in flavor whether it is in the module text or not. Some of the later modules are very good indeed, with tricky encounters that play off of the Realms history and lore. The lower level adventures tend to be easier, which lets a new player get the hang of the campaign, the convention adventures have a reputation for being tough. One oddity is that adventures can be played in any order, so one adventure can find your characters far from the last adventure you played with little connection between the two. This causes some discomfort, but it really makes it easier on players and DMs in the long run so I see why they did it. They are also doing some regional mini-campaigns to try to alleviate this a bit. So far I haven’t played any modules that I would rate as awesome, but I have played many that are very good.
The Community
One of the things that kept me out of RPGA play for many, many years was the reputation of its community, which was that the players were competitive min-max fanatics. I admit real nervousness about playing Living Forgotten Realms as I come from much more a roleplaying background, but so far my experiences with the RPGA community have been almost all positive. The Living Forgotten Realms has done away with many of the campaign elements that made previous campaigns a haven for the hardcore, even non-number crunchers can flourish in the campaign now. The roleplay is limited by the adventure format and some of the campaign abstractions, but given those limitations the roleplaying is healthy, even by my standards. A table of people playing a pick up game is never going to be as cohesive as a long term group, but all the players I have met so far have been friendly and helpful to new players.
Summary
Pros: Easy to get a game, Good adventures, good community
Cons: Abstract campaign format, RPGA’s terrible website*
One of the reason’s Living Forgotten Realms is hard to rate is that it could be different everywhere it is played. Your local Friendly Local Gaming Store might be filled with a completely different mix of people to mine. For me the overall feel of the campaign is very good. The focus is on fun play, not competition. The adventures are fun lite D&D modules, targetted at four hours of play per adventure. The community is remarkably good, even given D&D players tendency to argue over rules endlessly the forums and my local games days are remarkably drama free. My local DMs have been excellent. Living Forgotten Realms will never supplant my regular gaming group for fun play, but it is a fun way to get out of the house, meet some people and play some D&D. As a player I give it a thumbs up.
Some Resources:
The Official Forums are very good as I mentioned above.
Trask at Living Dice didn’t like the campaign
Some interesting fan run forums
* The second sentence on the Living Forgotten Realms Web page talks about how awesome the campaign will be when it kicks off on August 13th. August 13th 2008. I am amazed at how little the guys who run the RPGA seem to care about how the website looks.
My experience with LFR games has been very positive. I really enjoy the self-contained nature of the adventures. The story reward handouts are a nice touch. If you end up playing a lot of LFR games they can really had extra flare to the role-playing, as my group has experienced first hand. I think you’re review of this gaming niche is fair and balanced. I agree that the RPGA website could benefit from a usability expert.
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