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Organized Play: Can You Learn To Love It?
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<blockquote data-quote="Stormonu" data-source="post: 7652442" data-attributes="member: 52734"><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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 <em>how</em> you use their products is being tyrannical, not helpful. It's simply not their business, nor should it be.</p><p></p><p>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. </p><p></p><p>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).</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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).</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Stormonu, post: 7652442, member: 52734"] 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 [I]how[/I] 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. [/QUOTE]
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