First of all thank you very much for the feedback, I appreciate it very much. The things you guys have said kind of put a name on what I have been trying to identify for quite a while now. I have been struggling with what has been going wrong for months and have not been able to pin point it. That could be because there were several things that has been going wrong.
Character Development: One of the biggest problems with the Eridus campaign, I have noticed, is the Character Development, or as Josh puts it-Character Buy-in. Right from level 1 I have been trying to run the game as a series of adventurers. I think this is the first campaign where I tried to do that. I apologize greatly for this mistake. I truly believe you can't have immersion and as Ed put it-good fiction-when there are set boundaries for the characters. I don't think I ever gave you guys the chance to go where you wanted, or even choose between several directions. It is one of the biggest mistakes a GM can make. I also did not provide opportunities for characters to follow their own story lines, or it was very minimal if I did. I wanted an epic campaign with a great story so I was pushing for that end when all I had to do was let the players make the decisions and a great story general unfolds around them. This gave birth to the Linear feeling mentioned above.
Adventure Based Campaign: I mentioned a little of this above. This is a campaign driven by one adventure after another. Something I never like doing in the past, but it seems I felt into it this time. Just because I made the adventures myself doesn't make them any less a module for the characters to follow. I found that when I wrote up the adventures, I did my best to make the characters follow the path of the adventure. This is a HUGE no-no in roleplaying games. I made it worse by making you level up at the end of each adventure. This takes away from a lot of the cohesion and immersion when you know you will only improve when you finish this adventure you are on.
MMO Tabletop Game: In my opinion the game has been shifting toward this end since the release of 3E in 2000. I believe the MMO has become a very popular gaming environment and developers believe they can get more players if they give it that feel. It could be simply because their own experiences are seeping into the D&D rules. I am not sure, but that is what is happening. I think I said from the beginning that 4E was the next step for the MMO feel. Unfortunately for some of you, this I like this edition better than 3E and would like to continue with it at least until 5E comes out and hopefully it is everything or at least some of what they promised. The 5E playtest has been promising but it has a long way to go. I like a lot of the concepts and rule changes so far. For me, the hardest thing about 4E is to get away from the magic card game feel. This would have to be done by each player and I know it isn't easy.
Proposition One: I think if some of these problems mentioned above are worked out we could have a much better experience at the table, no matter what the edition we are using. My proposition here is to shelf the Eridus campaign and start fresh with 1st level characters in a new campaign. I can have something ready in a couple of weeks (promise). I know you guys are very attached to your characters but I think if we keep going with this campaign the funk will only get deeper and we may never recover from it. I really have been working on some new ideas (like I said I have been detecting problems for quite some time now), I can have a game ready in 3 weeks at the latest.
Proposition Two: I know that a couple of other people have been wanting to run a campaign. We can shelf the Eridus campaign; someone else can run a campaign of their choosing, for as long as they like. I can get the new campaign fleshed out while someone else runs.
I am hoping to get as much feedback as possible on this new proposition from as many players as possible. Please let me know what you think.
