Organized Play: Can You Learn To Love It?

As we continue to get ready for GenCon, lets look at the bright side of Organized Play programs. And we'll look at the seamy underbelly while we're at it.


Two More Columns til Gencon….Two More Columns til GenCon…

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So, 13th age just launched. The ink is still wet (but doesn't smell as good as that old purple ditto ink did in grade school…..). And they've already kicked off their organized play campaign.

I find it telling that the project that has been pitched as a "Love Letter to D&D" made sure that it's initial Go-To-Market plan includes an organized play campaign. Clearly, from the publisher's point of view, there's something to value about OP. But so many people have such negative things to say about organized play games. Are they just the vocal minority?

My Organized Play History

When I moved to Kansas from the East Coast, I left behind my high school and undergrad gaming groups and contacts. Over the first few years here I started a couple of failed groups with friends who were mildly interested in gaming, or willing to put up with giving the game a try if I would just shut up about them.

But all of those attempts were short-lived and mostly anemic.

I met a local guy in an online gaming forum; we met for coffee, talked about games, and that led to the two of us trying to put together a gaming group with friends we could both bring to the table. That group ultimately didn't quite succeed, but it did introduce me to another local gamer friend who took me along to my first Living Greyhawk game.

And that's pretty much where it started for me. Living Greyhawk enabled me to find a game almost any weekend I wanted to find one; it introduced me to a bunch of new players, and helped me get back into the hobby that I had been trying to find my way back into for years.

Eventually, I connected with enough people through LG to put together a home game. And, with some changes in personnel and game system over the years, that group has been going strong ever since.

So, I owe my current home game -- which makes me very happy.

Organized Play at the Big Conventions

Finding a game with your local group is one thing -- taking part in the offerings that a large con can leverage is something else entirely.

• Competitive Play: The D&D Championship, FourthCore Deathmatch (not an RPGA event, but still a sort of competitive organized play) and a few other options take the game experience and make it competitive. (I'm not sure if PFS has a Championship-style offering -- if they do, please post it in the comments and I'll update this)
• Large-Scale Interactives: The Battle Interactive is a staple at some of the larger conventions. It brings together the efforts of dozens of tables playing through the same adventure, all working to achieve the same collective goal.
• Introductory Games for New Players: One of the obvious benefits of these OP offerings is they're a low-impact way for inexperienced players to try out a game for the first time -- and in a lot of cases the OP groups offer dedicated introductory sessions for the new players.

Dealing With The Downsides

There are no shortage of threads on this or other RPG boards that delineate the problems with organized play. In the end, they come down to some risks we take when we venture out of our comfortable home game rooms and try to connect with other players.

1. Other People can be Crappy - That's a risk anywhere, really. Sure, you're more likely to run into a smelly fatbeard or ubermunchkin than you are a trust fund snob, but one way or another, meeting new people means a risk that you'll meet someone you don't like for one reason or another. Hey, they might not like you, either!
2. Other DMs can be Crappy - It's exciting to play with different DMs, because each one brings something unique to their game -- even in an organized play environment. Of course, just like when you meet new players, meeting new DMs takes the risk that you'll wind up not liking what they're doing. But there's also a chance you'll like it -- or get a good idea from them.
3. The Adventures can be Crappy - A lot depends upon where the adventures come from, but in a lot of OP campaigns, the adventures are fan-written, and don't quite have the polish that we expect from a print adventure. Very often there are connections to previous adventures that you may not have played, or don't remember the details of because it's been too long. And the convention format may force a sort of railroadish adventure that you don't enjoy. But, even on the most scripted railroad, it's possible to have a good time with the details.

See a pattern there? The problems we associate with these OP events pretty much can all be summed up with the idea that anything new is a risk -- meeting a new food, a new book, a new game, or a new player -- they all run the risk of being something that you will wind up not caring for. But if you don't get out there and try something new, you're going to be stuck at home eating the same PBJ, reading the first Wheel of Time book over again, playing first edition D&D and only playing rogues.

So, what do you think -- is Organized Play awesome? A means to an end? Or not worth touching with Piratecat's 10' pole?

 

[Stormonu]

I lean towards [MENTION=17106]Ahnehnois[/MENTION] in that I worry OP has been detrimental to the RPG hobby, but until now, couldn't articulate my feelings about it.

As far as the RPG companies go, Organized Play is great. It gets their product into the minds, if not the hands of the community. It leads to sales, and bottom line the companies need sales to keep them in business. Their interest is not in how the products get used, only that in it sells and that they can depend on selling more. While I don't want poor quality game material, a company that's more worried about how you use their products is being tyrannical, not helpful. It's simply not their business, nor should it be.

However, I get the feeling that how RPGs are played have undergone the same sort of change that First Person Shooter (FPS) video games have undergone. The first few FPS games (Doom, Quake) had fairly extensive single-player (or co-op) story modes. Multiplayer death matches (or modes like Flag Capture) were seen as "nice add-ons". Trying to carry this analogy to RPGs, games like D&D were pretty much built with the intent you'd be playing in a long-term campaign with the same group at someone's home. One-shot adventures were for Cons or tournaments.

As the FPS games progressed, the multiplayer aspect became stronger and stronger. Nowadays, it's not atypical to find FPS games that have such anemic single-player modes that they might as well not have that mode exist (Battlefield 3 comes to my mind).

Meanwhile, RPGs found themselves with the dilemma of "life". People didn't seem to have the time or patience to sit through 8-10 hour sessions two to three times a week. Getting people's schedules synched could be troublesome. Computers could present many of the appealing factors of RPGs faster and quicker. To survive, ways had to be found to decrease the obligations associated with table games - and Organized Play fulfills those needs wonderfully.

And as far as video games go, the evolution has been fine for those who enjoy the multiplayer PvP aspect of the game. For folks like me, who prefer playing co-op or with a couple of friends against some bots it frankly sucks. (Doubly so when you get stuck on a server, where after 30 minutes of play, you finally to just manage to score your first kill. Triply so when everyone else playing around you purchased those upgrades your working your butt off to acquire in-game).

I feel pretty much the same way with RPGs that heavily push Organized Play. OP has, to my experience, a completely different feel from at-home play. Part of it seems to be a more detached approach to the game and a faster pace of advancement/acquisition in OP. And I fear that companies that rely more and more on their OP products will ignore those who prefer "home campaigns", and may actually release material that is harmful to the latter style of play. Harmful in what way? Well, restrictive and/or riddled with power creep I would venture to say.

But I get the feeling that OP is the "wave of the future" and the model that future successful RPG companies will need to follow to survive. I'm just not thrilled about being "dragged along" into it. I want to keep my games geared towards a homey style of play. To me, my home games just feel more personable than OP - in OP, for whatever reason, I don't feel close to the other players, and that detachment takes away from my enjoyment and actually alters my play style.

 

[pogre]

My response might be a bit dated, as I have not run OP since the demise of 3.5. However, when I ran rpga games at conventions, including GenCon, it was a great time. The players in my games were fun people and we had a grand time. I probably ran a dozen or so RPGA games and never had a bad experience and met people from around the world.