Living Forgotten Realms (LFR) is series of organized game-play sanctioned by the RPGA. The “Living” in Living Forgotten Realms represents a framework for D&D games that allows players all over the world to participate in adventures using the same guidelines. Some people love LFR and others hate it. I happen to fall about as far into the hate it camp as you can get. Today I’m going to share 7 reasons I dislike LFR so much. But don’t worry, for those of you who enjoy LFR, Ameron will be providing the flip-side of this discussion on Friday when he provides 7 reasons that he loves LFR.
I originally wanted to call this article “Why I Hate Living Forgotten Realms: A Terrible Culture of Play” but I thought that might be too inflammatory. I also though it might lead some readers to believe that I’m suggesting everyone abandon LFR, which is absolutely not the case. This article is based on my personal experiences with LFR. It’s “Why I Hate LFR” and not “Why You Should Hate LFR” so keep that in mind when you leave your comments.
1. Mandatory Dungeon Mastering
In order to play LFR everyone must take a turn at being the Dungeon Master. You’re expected to DM at least one game for every six games you join as a player. As a result people who cannot and do not want to DM are forced to do so if they want to keep playing at their FLGS. Forcing anyone to DM just so that they can play again is not a good enough motivation. As a result there are too many examples of mediocre DMs putting together halfhearted LFR adventures with the only goal being to get it over with. As new players climb the ranks and have to DM themselves, they take after the DMs who came before them. Being the DM in a public game for strangers is the most challenging thing you will do as a DM. But beyond needing the chops to do it, a person needs to want to do it. If you don’t want to run the game, I don’t want to play it.
2. No Cohesive Plotline
The adventures in LFR are often called modules or mods because they are modular. While this modular approach works for lamps who don’t care which light bulb is in the socket, this same approach does not work for my character. You cannot place him in any city with any group of adventurers fighting some unpronounced bane of someone’s existence. Eventually he gets a spinning feeling and the impression that he’s lost. Each time I play Wardell Greenfeather, the Kenku Bard, he wakes up in some bar in some city or town he’s never been to or ever heard of with absolutely no memory of how he got there. He finds himself surrounded by five homicidal maniacs (very possibly serial killers) who he immediately befriends and joins ranks to make an adventuring party. In these circumstances, of course player introductions and an attempt to reconcile each character’s back-story seems trite. After all you have a lot of opposition to contest within these absurd circumstances. Unfortunately you’re usually forced to just forget it, especially if you’re at an oh-so-common table where people just want to kill things and roll lots of dice all night.
3. Tragically Bad Adventures
Getting the party together in the first place often requires the DM to wave his magic wand. For me this sets the bar low right off the bat, and then the adventure proceeds to limbo right under it. I have played countless adventures where, from the onset, I just didn’t care for the plotline at all. Nothing was interesting about it because I had no idea where I was or who the people around me were. The adventures seldom make more than a passing mention of where the adventure is actually supposed to take place. From my memory I can only recall that one was set on an island where there was a forest, another in a port on some body of water that was never described, while another was near a mine. What a thrilling backdrop for the epic adventure that will unfold before us over the next four hours.
At some point in the first five minutes of play the NPC who offers you the job or assigns you the mission (which you of course have to accept without question or the game is over before it begins) is unlikable. Inevitably this person is the mayor, the owner of a bar, a wealthy patron, or some form of shady figure. “Do this thing, get that McGuffin” and after the tired fantasy trope is dragged out of the stable to plow that infertile ground one last time in its life, it’s time be rewarded with six identical magic swords. Why are monsters always flipping out and doing stupid things to anger the locals? Some of those things have an Intelligence score of, like, 16 or more. If you need creatures to fight there are plenty of motivations you could supply them with but it’s always destroy the town, city, country or world. I can’t believe that saving the world was made boring.
4. Treasure Bundles
“In the golden gilded chest you find seven different bundles with treasure enough for everyone in the party. Provided that each of you only take one, and the number of each bundle in the chest depends upon how many of each bundle each of you want to take.” says the DM. I admit that the treasure bundles are, even though an extremely graceless one, a logistical solution to the problem of handing out loot. It’s a method of insuring that the people around you don’t selfishly take from your character what they worked to earn. A big problem with this system of awarding treasure (beyond the fact that in-game they make no damned sense) is that there are circumstance where people are only playing an adventure because they want one of the bundles that’s offered. I’ve even played with some people who play the same adventure again to get a different item from one of the bundles. As a DM I am appalled by this kind of meta game playing. This person is playing an over arching looting game and not the adventure at all.
Why bother? None of the treasure is real anyways. Just write it down on your sheet if you want the item so bad. No one will ever notice or care, and even if you do meet someone who takes note, so few people actually have the wherewithal to call you on your fraudulent book keeping. Just write down that you have a billion gold, it’s free. No one will ever know or care.
5. Boring and Over-Emphasized Combat Encounters
Three combat encounters in four hours of play is a challenge even for groups whose rounds roll like a well-oiled machine. People who play LFR seem to love combat, and why wouldn’t you? If you take out any possibility for character development and you stick people in painfully rehashed scenarios then what is there left for them to do? Characters are viewed as nothing more than a lump of stats with powers. So when the PCs are forced to start combat by placing their minis on one of the squares labeled “PCS START HERE” in a room that’s supposed to be a theatre with no windows, only one door, no raised stage or seats… it is considered completely acceptable game design. I feel bad for fighting the criminals who are operating in this city. They’ve obviously been robbing people with absolutely no spatial awareness and as such have become lazy in the interim. The people of this town don’t need heroes, they need a metal health institute. There’s no backstage, there’s nowhere for the audience to sit, there’s no place to hang lights, place props or even take tickets. Every set would have to be carried in piece by piece through the five-foot wide door and assembled inside, in total darkness. Awesome.
I’m just not interested in rolling dice, generating and comparing numbers until a number that represents the life of an ill-defined assailant is reduced to zero. I need to know that each and every fight is meaningful or for some greater goal in order to fight it. I’m not interested in gaining xp so that my character’s level goes up so that he can get a new power that generates larger numbers to be used against another stat block that has higher numbers than the stat blocks I used to compare numbers against.
6. Formulaic and Forced Skill Challenges
The claim that fourth edition doesn’t allow for role-playing is incorrect. Skill challenges were introduced as a game mechanic to help DMs understand how to structure a non-combative (or extrapolated combative) situation in a similar manner to a combat encounter insofar as skills and DCs are used and experience is gained. In LFR any amount of time that could have once been invested in role-playing is totally extrapolated into skill challenges that boggle my mind. Some skill challenges have taken what would have been the most interesting part of the adventure and reduce them to the DM saying “Who has Nature? Ok, roll it” and then they read off the read aloud text from the adventure. That’s clearly not the way to run a skill challenge but I digress. I have been in LFR games where the DM simply skipped the skill challenge because she didn’t like them. Fine, that’s better than dragging a dead horse through the mud, I guess.
Other times the skill challenge is actually about something that no one cares about. The “let’s walk through the woods” skill challenge is an excellent example. The epic feel of the adventure is lost when you force Grull’than the Half-orc Barbarian to roll Perception to make sure he doesn’t step of thistles or get lost. “Why don’t we just spend the 12 silver pieces it costs to hire a guide from town to take us there?” asks Grull’than. Because there is a skill challenge here in the adventure and you’re going to like it. Once in a LFR skill challenge I was actually sent to buy nails. It’s rough being an adventurer in the Forgotten Realms.
7. LFR Is Not Your Babysitter
Please don’t bring your children to play just because you’re there and you don’t want to hire a babysitter. I am not responsible for your child and you assume incorrectly that others will gladly endure their poor behavior. I have nothing against playing D&D with kids. After all I was a D&D camp councilor all summer. (Read about my camp experiences: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3.) I don’t dislike children, but it is not fair to the rest of the people at the table to force them to endure a 4-hour adventure next to a hyper-active nine-year-old. It is irresponsible to have strangers supervise your child. I am glad your child is learning how to play D&D but until they learn how to play on the same level as the adults they should be playing D&D with people their age or with their family.
With that, I bring my tirade to an end. I realize that this list of sounds really mean and critical. I really don’t like LFR and as such will never have anything to do with it ever again for my sake and yours. For those who enjoy playing LFR, please continue to play. I hope that everyone reading this (on both sides of the argument) get at least a laugh out of this. Be sure to visit Dungeon’s Master on Friday when Ameron shares his “love it” list. Until then, let me know why you hate (or even just dislike) LFR.
Bauxtehude appears courtesy of the Shattered Sea, the home of the Shattere Sea D&D actual play podcast.
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1 2 3 Next »Amen!
Ditto! Having played and DM'ed both, I can say that the D&D Encounters is much better. But, I have access to a weekly campaign. Folks who don't are sometimes left with little choice.
Well, I'm sorry you feel this way! But I want to point out that some things you talk about here might be local phenomena for you. For example: there's no rule or guidelines that I know of that say anyone has to DM Living Forgotten Realms..ever. So your local meetup may be coercing you into DMing but it's not the LFR campaign mandating that. I've been DMing weekly at the local meetup for over two years and there are some players who I've seen there who have never Dm'd.
Your second point is definitely a legitimate concern. There is something called MyRealms adventures- these are blank adventure templates that Dms are meant to use to create original adventures that fill in the cohesive plotline. For some reason, very few DMs are willing to create their own LFR adventures, though. I think theyre awesome. I manage two Adventuring Companies (formerly three) and create almost all of the adventures for them- one is a Drow house set in the Underdark, and one is a group that travels aboard a riverboat casino all around Faerun- half of the adventures usually take place on board the ship and often focus on the soap-operaseque relationships between the players, or players and NPCs. Yes, it's still totally LFR. With MyRealms you basically get a session budget of XP and treasure and create whatever adventure you want with that.
Your third point- I'm sorry to say- also a legitimate concern. There are some really great LFR adventures, and there are some that aren't my thing at all. Once again, I advocate using MyRealms to create the ideal LFR experience and take ownership of the campaign world, but that brings us straight back to your first point about not wanting to DM. :(
I think the rest of your points are good as well. There's no way to get around the treasure issue just yet (although alternate systems are being discussed right now, especially with item rarity on the horizon). Once again- there's tools in place to make the Living Realms exactly like you want it to be, (use the MyRealms adventures to create your own skill challenges and encounters) but that won't help unless someone is willing to create these adventures and Dm them in the first place.
The last point seems like a local issue.
So anyhow- bottom line, I want to say- I think that you are totally right that there are problems, but that here are also tools to make it different- to take control of it. LFR got to be the way it is now because people involved in it have been very set in their ways about how Living Campaigns work. But those people aren't the final authority.
1. Mandatory DMing: Is this actually a core LFR rule? It's sure as hell not how it runs at my store. We have one or two people who actually PREFER DMing over playing, and they run all our LFR events (and other organized play days). They like it, and do a good job.
2. Cohesion: This is fair, but isn't this kind of an inherent assumption of the format? I mean, personally I'd just say that if you're a hardcore story guy and want an ongoing story that makes sense, **LFR isn't something you should be doing in the first place**. It isn't *FOR* you, it's for the players who just want an evening of punching things. I guess I'd counter this with a challenge: how would you change this assumption while still keeping LFR as a drop-in format? I personally can't think of a single way to make module-to-module story cohesive without mandating that the same group do stories together in a certain order.
3. Bad, Tropey Adventures: Again, this is down to the format. It's unfortunate, but you just don't have that much time in a four-hour time slot to properly embellish the environments and characters. The story writers have to lean on recognizeable tropes so that players instantly understand people and places they see. Complex motivations take more time to properly set up and develop, and you just don't have time for that in a four-hour gaming slot.
4. Treasure: You aren't allowed to repeat the same adventure, so those players are cheating.
5. Bizarre Fight Settings: I'd guess that this is because they design encounters to be buildable with dungeon tiles. Players are expected to be able to suspend disbelief a bit and fill in the holes in their heads-- sure, these tiles don't have audience seating on them, but since we're all pretending anyway, what's the harm in pretending one more thing and just saying that stuff is all there?
6. Skill Challenges: This goes back to your first complaint-- if people are DMing against their will, then it's not surprising that they're half-assing the skill challenges. In our group, our DM runs them in a very fluff-heavy manner, approaching it from the "What do you want to do? Ok, make a [check]" perspective instead of a, "Skills are: [X, Y, and Z]. Everybody make checks. Go." method. LFR is no different from regular D&D on this count: good and bad skill challenges are ENTIRELY down to the DM.
7. Children: Not a problem I've run into.
Final thoughts: LFR has a target demographic of players-- the fluff-light, "I want to goof around for four hours and kill stuff" players. For players in this group, it's a lot of fun. For players not in this group, of *course* it's going to be awful-- **you're not the target audience**. This is true of ANYONE partaking of ANYTHING they aren't the target audience for-- guys watching chick flicks, adults watching NickToons, autistic kids going to raves... whatever.
You approach the article as if LFR could have satisfied you, but fails for reasons X, Y, and Z. I think that's disingenuous-- LFR was *never* going to be fun for a fluff-heavy RPer. Appeasing those players isn't even one of its objectives. The organizers know their demographic, and do a pretty good job of building experiences that will work *FOR THEM*.
Story-oriented players should be participating in games that are tailored to their preferred experience-- long-run games with a consistent DM, a strong story, and opportunities for freeform roleplay. Sure, it would be great if you could also do pickup games, but I just can't see that ever working out with someone in your player bracket. Even if LFR released modules that had no fighting and were four hours of beautifully-written mystery story, you'd still complain that it doesn't make sense for these six characters to suddenly know each other at the start and instantly begin working together.
And stuff.
This is interesting, because I can see both sides of the coin here.
The group I game with is completely ok with showing up for mods with no cohesive reason for being where they're at, and rolling dice, killing monsters, and leveling up. The characters are very two-dimensional ("my character likes beer!"), and play focuses on combat rather than character building and story telling. There is little concern for over-arching plots, and most of them couldn't point to Cormyr on a map. All well and good, we have fun.
The group I DM for is a bunch of High School kids. I play LFR with them as well, but I try and fill in some blanks for them to make it more of a campaign. For example, they were in place X, when they got a letter from someone in their past (something I had to make up), and one of the "quest cards" (put out by Wizards). The letters pointed them to start looking in either Y or Z area, so they headed to Y. Between X and Y, there are a few countries, so they find adventure along their journey. Thus, the modules have been organized by me, the DM, in a cohesive way; it makes sense that they're playing this module because they're travelling through that area on their way to Y (I usually pull out the map to show them). They also have an overarching quest.
As of right now, there are only two "official" quest cards, but I'm planning on making up more quests to help string modules together. That's where the MyRealms (mentioned above) come in handy. Quest tasks can be completed in published modules (as they are for the "official" quests), while the Quest finale will be a MyRealms.
Before starting as a DM for these kids, my total Living RPG experience was of the former variety (LG/LFR). However, with a little work and imagination (as well as a steady play group), it's not too difficult to plug the modules together in a way that makes sense. And I've actually had fun with that challenge.
I guess the key there is playing with the same group all the time. It's difficult to get cohesive story if you only play at conventions or gamedays.
Hey Peter,
by the sounds of it you're putting in as much work into LFR as I would to my home game which is exellent. For what it's worth I've really enjoyed playing the D&D Encounters program because it was started up at my FLG by a grop of people who were excited about it and really did their best to make it fun.
LFR seems to have a different culture of play and if that's fine for them that's fine. It's just really not for me. As you have shown there is a lot of potential for LFR, which is likely why I am so frustrated by it in the first place.
If you would care to link MyRealms that would be great. Thanks for the comment.
I don't disagree with any of your points, but I'm not sure any of them are fixable. How else would you run a series of standardized, sanctioned adventures?
Like Peter above I agree with you 100% about points 2-6, Point 7 I've only had to endure during some Gamedays and point 1 I do believe is a locale phenomena albeit probably quite common.
Another point I'd like to bring up is the design for 4 hour session lengths, although this is quite workable in a house campaign where you can continue next session. Trying to bring 6 people together to tell a whole story through D&D 4e is quite unrealistic, a least bump them up to 6 hrs to have a little breathing room and role play.
I used to play in Living Greyhawk a bit before and for some reason I seemed to have enjoyed it more. Now I hate LFR so much that I won't play in it even if it is my only source for D&D play. At least I've found the encounters format to be more to my liking.
#2 is the one that ruined it for me.
The meta gaming also drives me crazy where folks seem to see each adventure as a way to get the next crazy magic item so they can go to the next adventure to get the next crazy magic item so they can...
I started going to LFR to see I really wanted to get back into D&D after a 30 year hiatus.
I still go but not as often and now more to DM, since I do enjoying that. Especially running skill challenges but not saying that they are skill challenges. That does screw some folks up!
You can get the MyRealms adventures from the Wizards.com website.
Take a look though:
https://webapp.wizards.com/download/adventures/MYRE11LFR.zip
I can understand that LFR isn't for everyone, but culture of play is really defined by people. For content issues, I think in most cases, yeah, you really nailed it..those are real problems. But that's why I think MyRealms really saves the day. What you found in your Encounters group is.. better people! I had this exact same issue- most of the issues you brought up in the LG era, and I switched to Xendrik Expeditions. and the difference for me was.. a differnt group of people.
Well good gaming anyhow!