PCIHenry wrote:
So if I understand Cody and Josh correctly, the living campaign itself is an impediment or a discouragement from running Home Campaigns?
What if there wasn't a living campaign? Would you just stop playing Arcanis or would you start up your own game?
I'd quit.
Not to be dramatic, but ...y'know when some really impressive author of a setting -PCI staff or someone else equally skilled- says "use what I made to tell your own story" I sometimes have that dog-like "cock head and aroo quizzically" reaction because it seems to me there's a sort of disconnect at work.
My experience is that the mind who dreams up the amazing setting is very often one of a very small number of people able to really make it work.
Take Mass Effect. It's actually pretty damn smart is a few clever ways. It's much more Buck Rogers than Modern Warfare. But lots of bad feelings are engendered by what're poorly understood as "bad story choices." They're not. But you've really got to be watching the corners to know that.
Or Warhammer 40k. The perpetual floating level of fan community turmoil about fanworks around it is pretty thick. It's hard to actually keep the "grimdark" tone consistent, and it's hard to like much of the setting if you do. It takes a damn creative, deft author to truly make it sing in all it's eternal horror. Most paid Black Library authors can't even do it.
Same deal Arcanis. I wouldn't have thought up the Mourner subplot from the 1st Arc. That idea was a spectacular, engaging extrapolation. Or the metaplot with the Black Moon and Umor/Kassegore/whatever? I really don't know, but I'm dying to find out.
I wouldn't have designed the history of the Elorii quite as it is. I'm not that ..uh... "merciless" is too strong a word, so let's say "thematically focused."
I loved the Dark Kin Life Quest of Redemption. Never would have taken that idea as far as it was, and oddly the few times I've brought the idea up with various PCI bright they react with something like curiosity flavored by a tiny little splash of outrage. "We have our name on
what and it's campaign legal?!"
It's been fifteen bleeding years folks. I'm still waiting to see the "Belisarda Question" unraveled. In that time I've been through 20 jobs, 3 cars, 2 homes, 3 years of Uni, 1 near-death experience (hard to measure, but 1 for certain) and an attempt to Enlist. Living/Legends of Arcanis is the strongest single through-line in my life. The others are family and friends -and the ones who've lasted that long I know because of Arcanis.
Frex: we've met at Origins. For me total Origins costs run ~$1000. That's the most money I've ever spent on
any one total thing.
Housing and transportation have doubtlessly amounted to far more. But for money saved, allocated, and spent on a single event? Living Arcanis, bar none. Taken in total all those trips to Origins are more than I've spent on anything except my student loans.
If PCI gave it all up, burned the books and moved to Tibet I'd go to my grave wondering if I'd missed something in the lore that'd answer some last burning mystery.
So to me the various Living campaigns are utterly worth the time and effort to know and love, but they're what really brings the setting to life. Without them it's just whoever making up whatever story. Odds are good they don't see the angles critical to keeping the sky where it is.
This also informs lots of the friction I'm part of about "interpreting" aspects of the lore or rules. I don't toss a salad for someone's "interpretation" of what they think the "spirit" of the thing is; this is dogma to me -I want to hear the answer directly from the mouth of
God, not some jagoff "priest." I'm happy to speculate and extrapolate, but when we're talking
What Actually Happened I have one source I want to hear from above any other -and he looks like Sam the Eagle.