Provinces of the Great Kingdom

[Rafael]

...it is such an overall great campaign and you are doing a fantastic job as a DM.

Go on...

But if there is one thing I didnt like, it was the inclusion of various Mystara elements without staying true to them.

RAAAAAAAH.

:wink:

Nah, not a problem. The deal is, though, I, as a DM, plant seeds that my players then let grow - or not.
All the Mystara elements in the campaign remained rather undeveloped - but mainly, at least from POV,
because the group didn't go after them.

Like, Ixion the android had a whole individual backstory that, in the end, we didn't see.
The same goes for Ka the Immortal, or, the actual origin of the rain of great fire.

The party decided to skip all those plots pretty much completely (or the plot involving the vampire Fang),
and I didn't really want to force them onto the group either. In retrospect, I should probably simply have left this kind of stuff out,
in order not to overcomplicate an already pretty broad plot, but I think it is important to keep players involved by introducing new stuff.

Suffice to say, on a gaming table, this would have been completely different.

I disagree with you if you are saying that information that the players can handle is all that is relevant. I think DM discussions of campaign background, even if these are things that the PCs will never learn about can be helpful, both to create an atmosphere of a consistant and more importantly to help the DM generate ideas. But I agree with you that things do need to ultimately lead back to the game and that too philosophical discussions are probably useless and perhaps even destructive.

Nono, I agree with you completely there.

Now, for us here, it's a special case, I think, because Blackmoor is such an occult setting, and because,
let's face it, we here are all RPG snobs that feel a dstinctive part of the game consists in this metagaming thrill we get
from figuring out the overall composition of a setting or a campaign.

However, I would certainly welcome it if we would concentrate on more things that have direct effects on the game -
like the detailing of the provinces, for example. At the same time, we have developed sucha level of metadiscussion,
that we always ask first "would Arneson have done that" before we go to the actual designing process,
that it is increasingly difficult for us to accept fresh ideas.

Like, most of the MMRPG episodes, or "The Redwood Scar", the one published adventure for BM in the ZG era,
are really, really generic in nature, and could be set anywhere. - Would you guys accept that kind of stuff if it didn't come with the
official logo? :wink:

I don't think so.