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Organized Play: Can You Learn To Love It?
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<blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 7652364" data-attributes="member: 5143"><p>I may be a little biased given I volunteered as a Triad member for a couple of years in LG and was a regional admin in LFR for a couple of years as well. However, here is my Organized Play experience:</p><p></p><p>I found out about LG from random posts on the internet and I investigated it because my D&D group had mostly fallen apart and wanted to see if there was a way to meet new players which I couldn't seem to find in any local stores or online. It may be that Winnipeg only has 600,000 people and our D&D Community is likely only a couple of hundred in the whole city. It's hard to estimate given that Winnipegers in particular don't seem to want to leave their houses or meet new people.</p><p></p><p>So, I eventually figured out what LG was and I ordered 2 adventures and ran them at a games day, but my friends and 2 random people we managed to convince to play were the only ones who would play.</p><p></p><p>Still, the adventures were interesting and I liked the flavour of Ket(our region of Greyhawk). We decided to order some more adventurers and ran it at another games day a couple of months later.</p><p></p><p>Then, I moved to Australia in 2002 because I met a woman online that I decided to go visit. I was there for a year and had no friends there and wasn't really sure what to do while my gf was at work. So, I looked for events in Sydney on the WOTC web site and found a store that ran LG games on a regular basis.</p><p></p><p>I showed up at the store and found out when they ran games. I showed up to every game and over time became good friends with the store owner as well as a number of regular D&D players. I joined a weekly D&D group in addition to showing up to all the LG gamesdays they put on as I enjoyed it so much.</p><p></p><p>Don't get me wrong. There were some bad DMs, a couple of bad adventures, and a couple of quirks from people that got annoying over time. However, the rules of LG and of 3e D&D kept a minimum quality of game, IMHO, so it never dropped below a threshold where I hated it. A couple of times I lamented that I had a particularly bad gamesday. But I shrugged and came back the next week to a really awesome adventure or DM that made it all worthwhile.</p><p></p><p>Eventually the 40 or so regular players at our local store became a community. I'd hang out with them outside of gaming and played board games with them or go to see movies. It was good to play with different people all the time. I got to see a lot of cool ideas for characters and meet a lot of people I never wouldn't have without LG.</p><p></p><p>Unfortunately, I had to leave Australia. But right before I left, I posted on the official LG mailing list that I was looking for anyone who wanted to play LG back in Winnipeg since I knew there was no group already doing so because I looked before I had started it myself. I found a player who said that they used to play LG in Winnipeg, but with just a small group of 6 people who only ran them as home games. He said he'd love to play again because they stopped when his DM left town.</p><p></p><p>So, I asked every D&D player I knew and him to come to a game. The people who showed up enjoyed it so much that other people started becoming more and more interested in it. Our local group grew to about 30 regular players. Our largest gamesday had 4 full tables of 6 players and 4 DMs.</p><p></p><p>During this time I also realized that there were other people doing the same things in other cities and if you went to them you could play more adventures. So, I played at GenCon. I made a trip to Fargo, ND for a concert and while I was there, looked up some local people who played LG and played a game or two. I became fast friends with a group of 15 or so regular players in Fargo. They came up to Winnipeg a couple of times to play our adventures too. We even created a yearly convention that took place at the International Peace Garden(which is on the border between ND and Manitoba) just so we could all meet halfway and play both adventures that MUST be played in ND and ones that MUST be played in MB since you can freely cross the border while in the gardens.</p><p></p><p>During this time we also had people from Edmonton/Calgary come to our Garden Games convention and became close enough friends with them that we made a couple of trips to Edmonton to play over there.</p><p></p><p>I eventually applied to become Triad since I was enjoying the friendships I had developed as part of LG and wanted to give back something. This allowed me to become better friends with the group of players in Toronto and surrounding areas and I visited a couple of their conventions. It also allowed me to become friends with some people from other regions who I still like to at least say hi and hang out with at GenCon every year.</p><p></p><p>The announcement of the end of LG(due to the end of 3.5e D&D) hit everyone hard. I've mostly lost touch with my LG friends. We don't run Garden Games anymore because it's entire purpose was to "get around" LG rules.</p><p></p><p>We tried to start the same sort of community for Living Forgotten Realms and for a while there it looked possible. However, there was no incentive to travel to conventions or even games days to play. So all our truly "Organized" play fell apart and we just ended up playing LFR adventures at people's houses. Until even that fell apart as people I knew slowly decided they didn't have time to show up on a regular basis or just didn't like 4e and stopped coming.</p><p></p><p>I'm currently not involved in any OP. I wanted to play at least a couple more LFR adventures this year at GenCon, but they decided not to have any there. I'm taking that as a sign of the end of OP, at least until whatever Living Campaign they come up with for D&D Next. Though, I'm awaiting its introduction eagerly. Hopefully it can help bring back the community I built up a couple of years ago.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Majoru Oakheart, post: 7652364, member: 5143"] I may be a little biased given I volunteered as a Triad member for a couple of years in LG and was a regional admin in LFR for a couple of years as well. However, here is my Organized Play experience: I found out about LG from random posts on the internet and I investigated it because my D&D group had mostly fallen apart and wanted to see if there was a way to meet new players which I couldn't seem to find in any local stores or online. It may be that Winnipeg only has 600,000 people and our D&D Community is likely only a couple of hundred in the whole city. It's hard to estimate given that Winnipegers in particular don't seem to want to leave their houses or meet new people. So, I eventually figured out what LG was and I ordered 2 adventures and ran them at a games day, but my friends and 2 random people we managed to convince to play were the only ones who would play. Still, the adventures were interesting and I liked the flavour of Ket(our region of Greyhawk). We decided to order some more adventurers and ran it at another games day a couple of months later. Then, I moved to Australia in 2002 because I met a woman online that I decided to go visit. I was there for a year and had no friends there and wasn't really sure what to do while my gf was at work. So, I looked for events in Sydney on the WOTC web site and found a store that ran LG games on a regular basis. I showed up at the store and found out when they ran games. I showed up to every game and over time became good friends with the store owner as well as a number of regular D&D players. I joined a weekly D&D group in addition to showing up to all the LG gamesdays they put on as I enjoyed it so much. Don't get me wrong. There were some bad DMs, a couple of bad adventures, and a couple of quirks from people that got annoying over time. However, the rules of LG and of 3e D&D kept a minimum quality of game, IMHO, so it never dropped below a threshold where I hated it. A couple of times I lamented that I had a particularly bad gamesday. But I shrugged and came back the next week to a really awesome adventure or DM that made it all worthwhile. Eventually the 40 or so regular players at our local store became a community. I'd hang out with them outside of gaming and played board games with them or go to see movies. It was good to play with different people all the time. I got to see a lot of cool ideas for characters and meet a lot of people I never wouldn't have without LG. Unfortunately, I had to leave Australia. But right before I left, I posted on the official LG mailing list that I was looking for anyone who wanted to play LG back in Winnipeg since I knew there was no group already doing so because I looked before I had started it myself. I found a player who said that they used to play LG in Winnipeg, but with just a small group of 6 people who only ran them as home games. He said he'd love to play again because they stopped when his DM left town. So, I asked every D&D player I knew and him to come to a game. The people who showed up enjoyed it so much that other people started becoming more and more interested in it. Our local group grew to about 30 regular players. Our largest gamesday had 4 full tables of 6 players and 4 DMs. During this time I also realized that there were other people doing the same things in other cities and if you went to them you could play more adventures. So, I played at GenCon. I made a trip to Fargo, ND for a concert and while I was there, looked up some local people who played LG and played a game or two. I became fast friends with a group of 15 or so regular players in Fargo. They came up to Winnipeg a couple of times to play our adventures too. We even created a yearly convention that took place at the International Peace Garden(which is on the border between ND and Manitoba) just so we could all meet halfway and play both adventures that MUST be played in ND and ones that MUST be played in MB since you can freely cross the border while in the gardens. During this time we also had people from Edmonton/Calgary come to our Garden Games convention and became close enough friends with them that we made a couple of trips to Edmonton to play over there. I eventually applied to become Triad since I was enjoying the friendships I had developed as part of LG and wanted to give back something. This allowed me to become better friends with the group of players in Toronto and surrounding areas and I visited a couple of their conventions. It also allowed me to become friends with some people from other regions who I still like to at least say hi and hang out with at GenCon every year. The announcement of the end of LG(due to the end of 3.5e D&D) hit everyone hard. I've mostly lost touch with my LG friends. We don't run Garden Games anymore because it's entire purpose was to "get around" LG rules. We tried to start the same sort of community for Living Forgotten Realms and for a while there it looked possible. However, there was no incentive to travel to conventions or even games days to play. So all our truly "Organized" play fell apart and we just ended up playing LFR adventures at people's houses. Until even that fell apart as people I knew slowly decided they didn't have time to show up on a regular basis or just didn't like 4e and stopped coming. I'm currently not involved in any OP. I wanted to play at least a couple more LFR adventures this year at GenCon, but they decided not to have any there. I'm taking that as a sign of the end of OP, at least until whatever Living Campaign they come up with for D&D Next. Though, I'm awaiting its introduction eagerly. Hopefully it can help bring back the community I built up a couple of years ago. [/QUOTE]
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