Player perspective after four years of play

With four years since session zero now under our belt I thought I would pull together some of the player views on the Ducal House campaign.

I polled my players and a couple of themes droped out:
- depth of the world
- NPC interactions and political intrigue
- no solutions, only problems
- character evolution through their campaign experiences

On depth of the world they said they liked how much time they have spent in the world, how familiar it now is - particularly after the significant amount of time in the starting city. Now as they return after quite a lot of time away - re-encountering NPCs and being back on well known terrain is something they are enjoying. The interaction with the world now has a fluency that is in line with what the characters that actuall dwell in this world ought to.

Deep record keeping is becoming a challenge which ties to long real-world calendar time passing while the game-world turns relatively slowly within it. The Bard has taken to bi-annual re-reads of their notes to try and keep it all in mind. Enjoyment of the world and its intracicies is had despite it being hard to retain.

I enjoy the world and intricacies, but they refuse to stay in my brain (shoutout to our great bard for the notes and our cleric for having the brains)

our actions have consequences, even the minor ones. I very much enjoy hearing rumours filter back or learning that something we neglected in the beginning has not died as a story threat but has been brewing in the background. it feels immensely rewarding and daunting at the same time to know that what you do matters...for the better and for the worse

familiarity with the world from having spent so much time in Thenya, and even after quite a lot of time away - spent the time, got to know the place - and can really look back and see how we have grown. It feels earned.

On NPC interactions and political intrigue they found NPCs had layers beyond just quick caricature in particular the notionally evil ones. They noted that a group with a cleric of Kord as the nominal leader approaches situations with 'we can talk to these people and find a solution together' instead of going in spells blazing because mighty as they are they cannot fight the entire giant court or a country where the whole army failed.

The incredible abilities implied by the colossal 3.5e bonii to things like diplomacy at first seem daft but then become necessary as realm-scale problems are being dealt with, wars pacified and other things where these abilities are needed. This has given ample opportunity for significant RP moments - the Clerics speeches as the family succession arc came to a conclusion - "literal goosebumps" said the bard.

the npcs (the more fleshed out ones like Aubrey, Corra, the General etc but also some of the randos) are SO LOVEABLE

the game feels serious and high stakes but allows enough space for silly character interactions and high jinx - once more it feels very balanced between the two imo

Sometimes it feels very daunting to go 'these are realm-scale problems, we need to get this right, if we put our foot in it, it is going to be bad.' Very much in the system 3.5e we have ludicrous bonii to diplomacy - but we *need them*

The players appreciate getting no solutions, only problems with the lack of pre-packaged solutions to the problems being something the players have to figure out a way around. One favourite campaign moment was the McGyvered solution from obscure magic trinkets to extract the treaty stone from below the Dam - written up as Location and Terrain as Puzzles

They like the diverse situations encounted both as the 'big cycles' of urban/wilderness/dungeon session series to the smaller switching within those from diplomancy to exploratoin to combat to downtime. This variety between hacking at things with magical weapons and throwing lightning bolts around and complicated political intrigue and scouring the hinterlands for lost things has been a hit while noting the higher level D&D means that situations become more challenging for each character to feel they can contribute equally as they become increasingly specialised with much less ability to substitute for each other.

Diverse set of situations; from diplomacy, to hex crawls, to dungeon crawls, to leisure time,

very much like the variety of the 'now I get to hack at things with Skycarver', now there is political intrigue which requires wracking brains

the game feels very versitile in what we are doing and I feel like the pace changes at the right points in time i.e. anytime we have been existing in one mode for a while something else comes along to mix it up

Interesting to me as a DM is players noting how the characters are making choices that they themselves would not because the character has evolved over the campaign and the experiences they have had within it. The characters becoming people in the minds of the players.

The long arc of the campaign has also thrown out sillier character moments like the very young sorcerer going overboard with glamours and the party nearly dying to some rats in a well due to being down there in their court dress to contrast the high drama and tough combats.

This is now the longest running continuous campaign for all of us and one of the first campaigns for most of the players so expectations were non-specific to start and certainly we were not expecting that we would end up where we are today.

A perfect illustration of this is the evolution of the character portraits - from the busts above at the start of the campaign to the fully kitted out adventurers flexing their specialties further up the page.

I wrote my DMs perspective more or less for the 100th session at the end of last year. Based on this feedback I am gratified they are enjoying it and that we still have momentum to keep going.