Topic: What I Learned from Stargazer [SPOILERS!]
I’m not sure I know what I’m talking about, so I’ll try to keep this short.
Last night I finally ran LotFP:WF -- specifically, Tower of the Stargazer. It was a spontaneous one-shot. Like any one-shot, there is always the issue of context. However, with Tower of the Stargazer, the lack of context felt more pronounced. This is not a criticism; on the contrary, the game felt to me -- because it was missing context -- as if I wan’t playing it to it’s potential.
TotS belongs in an ongoing campaign/sandbox where the players define their own goals. I think back to some of my old favorite TSR modules, such as Keep of the Borderlands (of course), Secret of Bone Hill, or the Village of Hommlet, and I find what I enjoyed about those were that the players worked out their own goals.
TotS could be a place in any of those modules, and what the players choose to do there is up to them to discover through role playing and prior to getting to the tower. Is it ...
To stop the lightning
Free the ghost
Find the Star Crystal
Retrieve some books
Get the treasure horde
probably more I’m missing...
Anyhow, it was after playing TotS, and feeling like I was missing something, that I have a little more appreciation for the structure of the game.