Let me say at the start that RPGA gaming is all the gaming I do in my life, and has been all I've done for a decade now. It is the optimal style of play for me. I can't imagine ever finding another way to play that is more satisfying to me.
Is it really that much of a hassle to join the RPGA, do a simple test and then order them through official channels?
For the very first time? Yes, it absolutely is. There are all sorts of hoops to jump through that us old hands know backwards and forwards. But doing it for the first time, as an RPGA outsider trying to get in? I reckon it would be a nightmare.
Even just getting an RPGA number online (not from a card handed out at an event) is a non-trivial task that many net-savvy, intelligent people have not been able to manage on their own without posting threads here on ENWorld asking how to do it. I know I sure don't know how to do it (thank goodness I got mine the old-fashioned way years ago).
The current module ordering system is (to my brain-type) very non-intuitive. If I didn't know those first few times exactly what I wanted to do, I doubt I'd have been able to figure it out without help (there is a good thread in the RPGA section of the Gleemax boards with a step-by-step, with screen captures, that is pretty helpful).
Example: there are 3 links that could conceivably proceed to ordering an adventure: "Event Reporting" - I'd like to report that I'm having an event, "My Events" - I'm having an event, and "Event Sanctioning" - I'd like to sanction an event. Experienced guys know which one to click on, but the first-time guy has to guess. The whole site is full of things like this - links are not described as directly as possible. It's not like you save significant money by having fewer words on your webpage; I'd call Event Sanctioning "Order an event", and My Events "Summary of my events" and Event Reporting "Report the results of an event". This is not the only problem, just a sample.
I mean, I've been consistently ordering mods from those guys since the late 90s, and I still have trouble with the mechanics of it (I'm in the middle of trying to get a WPN venue added for next month's local convention, and it's been two weeks of back-and-forth - and don't even get me started on how difficult it was to figure out how to begin that process).
Conclusion: once you get going, and have learned the website and the system in general, downloading LFR adventures from the RPGA for Private play is a reasonably easy thing to continue (and in my opinion well worth all the trouble). The entry barrier, however, is extremely (ridiculously) high, and moving beyond Private play to WPN-style public play introduces another huge entry barrier. The key, I think, from the point of view of a person trying to "spread the gospel" of the RPGA, is not to minimize the effort it will take to get started, but rather the emphasize the benefits awaiting a new member once they are in.
