Vknight
2020-04-19, 12:53 AM
So... to the players of said Gm, who i do not know if you visit this site just do not read ahead.
The Gm is a good gm he's got an ok plot for a military campaign.
Its dry and plain as we are dragged around from military mission to military mission all for the sake of retaking the continent from the Goblins.
See some 1000 years ago the Goblins allied with Giants, Orcs, Kobolds, Bugbears, Hobgoblins, Sahuagain, and Gnolls(Not minotaurs they are on our side just to note). With the goblins being the top dogs somehow and proceeded to conquer 90% of the continent we are on.
Our Kingdom survived because they have a 200 mile long wall that is 500ft high and like half a mile thick along its norther border(we are at the very south of the continent)
All very boring normal to give us some badguys and more. So whats the plot? Retaking the lands?
NOPE
We spend the first 12 sessions doing busy work.
Our nation has made no progress in retaking anything beyond the wall and our magic items are insane in what they have.
We have a teleportation network to get soldiers across the country in a few minutes.
We have the ability to equip a unit like ours so each member has a wand of fireballs at Level 7(4 man party)
We have instant fortress's
We also just invented guns for what that is worth.
But yeah 1000 years no progress, and 12 sessions of busy work.
Finally session 13 we went beyond the wall and have been out there since... its mostly been doing things to reinforce old outposts from 1000years ago. Also turns out there is a island of dragons that is probably half the size of our country willing to help...
So time to talk issues besides the Busy Work.
1; We are not the biggest fish in the sea. That can be fine but we don't even feel like the biggest fish in a tank.
What do I mean?
We spend the first session doing the most bull thing ever, that being a military training camp which is not fun it wasted an hour of our time and the only person in our group who enjoyed it is the Autocratic player.
There are 40 other units like us that are special forces, and we were not given great equipment only what we salvaged off goblins early on. Yes despite the stuff above and despite being special forces types. We did not get to requisition things until after the invasion began.
During out initial 3 sessions of proving we were competent we had a Level 11+ NPC following us. He was just there to judge us and show how cool he was.
There is a project to make a ship that is some 500ft wide and 2500 long to transport a small army to an archipelago to the west and conquer it. Cool world building except the Gm then had us do busy work for them clearing a lighthouse, oh also instead of cool ship mission to unexplored islands we got to go do more busy work.
There was the most infuriating thing in a cities sewer... yes we are special forces and we went into a sewer.
To clear out a goblin trap said trap is a baby statue that causes goblins to stare at it well Oozes eat them. We then saw the past with said baby and learned the following things. It fought and killed a dozen or so goblins along with its father. And so Kord made this statue to commemorate its awesome...
You know a great way to undermine characters is point out a toddler killed 1 Dozen goblins when we as a party of 4 people who were level 3 had trouble with 6 and a Ogre(or 5 hobgoblins, or 7 archers and 1 mage goblin).
Which leads into problem #2
2; The world doesn't feel alive it feels like a series of cutscenes happening and we are just there it does not connect, apply, or really effect us.
Like we made custom characters got told this is the world any history you made doesn't matter here are the missions and the real plot.
My character just wants to kill the world at this point and or become a god of wine and just leave because F this I'm out.
The Dwarf played by our autocratic player is an obnoxious military secret police guy so you know evil despite claiming he's not.
Our Tiefling is from the feywild(the player swapped out his guy for a character on loan from the feywild. Speaking of the feywild is normal.) so does not care how the war goes
The Druid is well a druid so stopping the gobilns makes sense but nature seems to be fine in a lot of places.
The 1000 years of Goblin invasion and the unification of all the evil guys is just an excuse to include higher CR monsters as fights go on.
It becomes a poor excuse when you realize goblins are the leadership but also the grunts.
The goblins launch raids and make portals to get around the wall.
But haven't been able to take it or make any progress in 1000years despite owning 90% of the continent having numbers and all the aforementioned allies.
Speaking of the wall was constructed to stop the goblins advance some 1000 years ago meaning this giant megalithic structure was built in an uncertain amount of time maybe weeks maybe years.
The problem is the invasion is very inconsistent with a time scale.
I mention this because the continent has a giant bridge that is like 1/10th(maybe even 1/20th) the size of the wall which for some reason we didn't build the wall there but we had time to build it further south and far bigger.
Said bridge connects the Southern 20-or-30% of the continent to the other 70%(or 80%) but instead we built way further south.
Not helped by the fact the dragon island and a mountain fortress of dwarves exist and are repelling the goblins. Both factions are also around said bridge and are still here 1000 years later.
Based on what various characters have said it sounds like our nation abandoned everyone else and started building that wall the moment the goblins became a threat.
Which also makes no sense because for some reason we found a 1000year old Unicorn trapped in one of our nations old buildings beyond the wall.
And encountered ghosts who were fighting goblins probably 1 or 2 weeks from the wall before it was constructed so yeah. And these are ghosts who clearly call it the Green Hoard/Tide.
TLDR?
Goblins got 90% of the continent except not in a few years and yet can't get the rest.
We have had 1000years and done nothing to improve or retake any of the 90%
Any easier choke-point exists and we didn't use it.
We have enacted no change and no impact on the plot except murder a general(we are level 7 going on 8). Our plan to instigate an orc uprising to try and split evil guys nope the orcs that heard it are all gonna be killed. Basically any plans we create to effect change on the setting outside of the plot is nothing.
The history of the invasion is a broken mess that contradicts itself in universe and out of universe.
3; Map is just awful really it is way to many magically splitting rivers, he's slowly fixed that and other issues hard to describe without the full map. And its a minor thing but just bugs me.
Political Problems of the Setting
4; Just gonna be blunt politics.
The Nation has way to many to go over but the most basic.
Mandatory service in the military or slave labor. The Gm retconned this into military service or civilian service.
We have secret military police who watch people and until the retcon had taken my characters parents to serve in slave mines. Now the retcon they are just fine and instead of my character being abandoned they just lost me?
Despite the fact we have bracers that if we fail to complete job in X time teleport us back to command so you cannot go AWOL as they can teleport you back and you can trigger it at any time.
No deserters I suppose.
There is a certain exaltation of the military its been implied that all the leadership are high up military brass or former military. Which we have also seen military brass being given major political positions and power.
People who do civilian service are looked down upon and those that want to not be involved are executed by being thrown to the other side of the wall to the goblins.
Frankly the nobility system makes no sense so I don't know how to address that.
Early on it was very easy to see and call the kingdom we were apart of, evil now its well its evil with pink ribbons saying ignore the doom spikes.
5; As a player I have never been a fan of Military based campaigns and the Gm has kind of dismissed that.
We are stuck to a tether of a shadowy command structure that comes off as evil as the badguys we are opposing.
It was fun at first because the gm's enthusiasm, but the lack of agency and more just drained energy from me and other players. We used to have 6 players and are down to 4 as of currently.
Frankly I am sick of the campaign we are doing the final session for awhile then we have to suffer through 2 or 3 more sessions of the Dwarf players rogue trader campaign before we will go back to something fun.
The Gm is a good gm he's got an ok plot for a military campaign.
Its dry and plain as we are dragged around from military mission to military mission all for the sake of retaking the continent from the Goblins.
See some 1000 years ago the Goblins allied with Giants, Orcs, Kobolds, Bugbears, Hobgoblins, Sahuagain, and Gnolls(Not minotaurs they are on our side just to note). With the goblins being the top dogs somehow and proceeded to conquer 90% of the continent we are on.
Our Kingdom survived because they have a 200 mile long wall that is 500ft high and like half a mile thick along its norther border(we are at the very south of the continent)
All very boring normal to give us some badguys and more. So whats the plot? Retaking the lands?
NOPE
We spend the first 12 sessions doing busy work.
Our nation has made no progress in retaking anything beyond the wall and our magic items are insane in what they have.
We have a teleportation network to get soldiers across the country in a few minutes.
We have the ability to equip a unit like ours so each member has a wand of fireballs at Level 7(4 man party)
We have instant fortress's
We also just invented guns for what that is worth.
But yeah 1000 years no progress, and 12 sessions of busy work.
Finally session 13 we went beyond the wall and have been out there since... its mostly been doing things to reinforce old outposts from 1000years ago. Also turns out there is a island of dragons that is probably half the size of our country willing to help...
So time to talk issues besides the Busy Work.
1; We are not the biggest fish in the sea. That can be fine but we don't even feel like the biggest fish in a tank.
What do I mean?
We spend the first session doing the most bull thing ever, that being a military training camp which is not fun it wasted an hour of our time and the only person in our group who enjoyed it is the Autocratic player.
There are 40 other units like us that are special forces, and we were not given great equipment only what we salvaged off goblins early on. Yes despite the stuff above and despite being special forces types. We did not get to requisition things until after the invasion began.
During out initial 3 sessions of proving we were competent we had a Level 11+ NPC following us. He was just there to judge us and show how cool he was.
There is a project to make a ship that is some 500ft wide and 2500 long to transport a small army to an archipelago to the west and conquer it. Cool world building except the Gm then had us do busy work for them clearing a lighthouse, oh also instead of cool ship mission to unexplored islands we got to go do more busy work.
There was the most infuriating thing in a cities sewer... yes we are special forces and we went into a sewer.
To clear out a goblin trap said trap is a baby statue that causes goblins to stare at it well Oozes eat them. We then saw the past with said baby and learned the following things. It fought and killed a dozen or so goblins along with its father. And so Kord made this statue to commemorate its awesome...
You know a great way to undermine characters is point out a toddler killed 1 Dozen goblins when we as a party of 4 people who were level 3 had trouble with 6 and a Ogre(or 5 hobgoblins, or 7 archers and 1 mage goblin).
Which leads into problem #2
2; The world doesn't feel alive it feels like a series of cutscenes happening and we are just there it does not connect, apply, or really effect us.
Like we made custom characters got told this is the world any history you made doesn't matter here are the missions and the real plot.
My character just wants to kill the world at this point and or become a god of wine and just leave because F this I'm out.
The Dwarf played by our autocratic player is an obnoxious military secret police guy so you know evil despite claiming he's not.
Our Tiefling is from the feywild(the player swapped out his guy for a character on loan from the feywild. Speaking of the feywild is normal.) so does not care how the war goes
The Druid is well a druid so stopping the gobilns makes sense but nature seems to be fine in a lot of places.
The 1000 years of Goblin invasion and the unification of all the evil guys is just an excuse to include higher CR monsters as fights go on.
It becomes a poor excuse when you realize goblins are the leadership but also the grunts.
The goblins launch raids and make portals to get around the wall.
But haven't been able to take it or make any progress in 1000years despite owning 90% of the continent having numbers and all the aforementioned allies.
Speaking of the wall was constructed to stop the goblins advance some 1000 years ago meaning this giant megalithic structure was built in an uncertain amount of time maybe weeks maybe years.
The problem is the invasion is very inconsistent with a time scale.
I mention this because the continent has a giant bridge that is like 1/10th(maybe even 1/20th) the size of the wall which for some reason we didn't build the wall there but we had time to build it further south and far bigger.
Said bridge connects the Southern 20-or-30% of the continent to the other 70%(or 80%) but instead we built way further south.
Not helped by the fact the dragon island and a mountain fortress of dwarves exist and are repelling the goblins. Both factions are also around said bridge and are still here 1000 years later.
Based on what various characters have said it sounds like our nation abandoned everyone else and started building that wall the moment the goblins became a threat.
Which also makes no sense because for some reason we found a 1000year old Unicorn trapped in one of our nations old buildings beyond the wall.
And encountered ghosts who were fighting goblins probably 1 or 2 weeks from the wall before it was constructed so yeah. And these are ghosts who clearly call it the Green Hoard/Tide.
TLDR?
Goblins got 90% of the continent except not in a few years and yet can't get the rest.
We have had 1000years and done nothing to improve or retake any of the 90%
Any easier choke-point exists and we didn't use it.
We have enacted no change and no impact on the plot except murder a general(we are level 7 going on 8). Our plan to instigate an orc uprising to try and split evil guys nope the orcs that heard it are all gonna be killed. Basically any plans we create to effect change on the setting outside of the plot is nothing.
The history of the invasion is a broken mess that contradicts itself in universe and out of universe.
3; Map is just awful really it is way to many magically splitting rivers, he's slowly fixed that and other issues hard to describe without the full map. And its a minor thing but just bugs me.
Political Problems of the Setting
4; Just gonna be blunt politics.
The Nation has way to many to go over but the most basic.
Mandatory service in the military or slave labor. The Gm retconned this into military service or civilian service.
We have secret military police who watch people and until the retcon had taken my characters parents to serve in slave mines. Now the retcon they are just fine and instead of my character being abandoned they just lost me?
Despite the fact we have bracers that if we fail to complete job in X time teleport us back to command so you cannot go AWOL as they can teleport you back and you can trigger it at any time.
No deserters I suppose.
There is a certain exaltation of the military its been implied that all the leadership are high up military brass or former military. Which we have also seen military brass being given major political positions and power.
People who do civilian service are looked down upon and those that want to not be involved are executed by being thrown to the other side of the wall to the goblins.
Frankly the nobility system makes no sense so I don't know how to address that.
Early on it was very easy to see and call the kingdom we were apart of, evil now its well its evil with pink ribbons saying ignore the doom spikes.
5; As a player I have never been a fan of Military based campaigns and the Gm has kind of dismissed that.
We are stuck to a tether of a shadowy command structure that comes off as evil as the badguys we are opposing.
It was fun at first because the gm's enthusiasm, but the lack of agency and more just drained energy from me and other players. We used to have 6 players and are down to 4 as of currently.
Frankly I am sick of the campaign we are doing the final session for awhile then we have to suffer through 2 or 3 more sessions of the Dwarf players rogue trader campaign before we will go back to something fun.