RPGA: Competitors are rising to the challenge

[DavidRoz]

ARPL and EN World Gameday

Would you guys be intrested in sending along some dm's or gamers to the EN World Gameday in NYC on Oct 11th? Let me know. VongKiller18@aol.com

Arthur, thanks for the invitation. As Michelle said, we don't have our judges program up and running yet. although I would like to point out that it is not about capital. It is more about being a new organization. We are just getting the word out, and in the NYC area, it has been hard to get people's ears. Soon, we will have more judges, and likely we will want to have ARPL games at EN World in 2004.

WE do have a volunteer in Boston who just asked to be our New England REgional Rep. I don't know if we can get him up to speed in time, but we should try. If he is willing to go to NYC on Oct. 11th as our rep, then we will have him bring hte usual flyers and information about ARPL, and perhaps if he likes to judge, we may send one or two of our games as exhibition games.

Is there any chance of ARPL setting up a forum to talk about the league?

David A. Rozansky
League Director
Adventure Role Playing League
www.arpl.org

 

[Piratecat]

David, who is your Boston rep?

 

[DavidRoz]

ARPL Authors

We haven't heard from RPN. I'll email those guys and see if they want to comment here.

ARPL [is] looking for AUTHORS for scenarios. What format are you planning on using? Do you pay royalties to authors? What are your top 5 game systems are you hoping to get scenarios for? Do you have any other tips for prospective authors?

Thanks!

jh

The Adventure Role Playing League is working on a format and writers guide. Again, we are fairly new, and these things take time. However, we are looking for adventures now, so we are not focusing on format all that closely. Generally, if you use te format used by publishers of adventures or RPGA-type modules, or if the adventure is easy to use by a judge adn presents the information clearly, we will be happy to work with it. Even if the adventure is written haphazardly with regard to format, we might be willing to work with it if it is a good adventure and set it into a reasonable format.

Generally, games should fall into either a table of 3-6 players, or 4-8 players, and should be playable in 4 hours. We do accept series of adventures, maybe meant to be played in succession.

Yes, we pay royalties to authors. All adventures submitted by freelance authors are covered by a contract. We pay 34 cents per league player who plays the adventure, paid quarterly. It's not a lot, but this is a hobby. We ask for exclusive first publishing rights, generally for about two years. The writer retains all rights, and we ahve no claim on teh material once the rights expire. We also accept games that may have been published elsewhere or played outside the league; we pay no royalties in these cases, and the games run as "unscored games" since we cannot know if players have played the adventure before.

WE are looking for D&D 3.5 and D&D 3.0 games as our first choice, but keep in mind that ARPL supports all published game systems. If you want to write an adventure in your favorite game system, please feel free to do so.

We accept submissions for capsule adventures (what have been called "Classic Adventures" by other groups) in any game system. Send them to editor@arpl.org. IF we like your adventure, we will be in touch.

Submissions for use with particular ARPL adventure settings (as we get them) should be submitted to the adventure setting director in charge of that adventure setting, or they can be sent to ARPL at editor@arpl.org and the editor will forward them to the right person.

As for tips for authors, I would say, be careful not to let the adventure drag on too long by writing in too many encounters. Playtesting is always good, but if you can't find a playtesting group, don't let that stop you. Make sure all rules needed are listed by page number from the core rulebook you are using, and clearly define any unusual use of rules or new rules and creatures. GMs like to ahve the information on these in the text when they need it, and at teh end in an appendix. Avoid lengthy combats, and realize that a weapon that does generally 12 points of damage on average will take a few hours to battle a 310 hp dragon.

Give the players a twist, but don't bury them in too much roleplay. ROleplay never goes as expected, so long drawn out mysteries can be disappointing to players. At teh same time, don't make it all a slug fest unless the game system is geared towards that (such as X-Crawl).

The main tip I can give is that authors should know how to tell a story, and should have some understanding of plots. There are plenty of writer's books on how to write good plots. Good writing, grammar, spelling and communication skills are necessary, and if your writing skills are not honed, then it will show and the adventure will suffer for it.

Thanks for asking.

Keep 'em Rolling,
David A. Rozansky
League Director
Adventure Role Playing League

www.arpl.org

 

[whifflebat]

Although I did not create a sanctioning body for adventures nor intend to manage any campaigns I did create the WorldsOfPlay site which I intend to use as an Adventure management and event tracking site for campaigns which wish to share thier campaigns with other players.

Support is the only thing that http://www.worldsofplay.org offers and will never be intended to charge players for membership (although I may work on a plan to recoup the server fees if it gets to large I would only focus on the groups that are being hosted and that would be after adding advertising.)

We also may have a few disenchanted exRPGAers soon who will support any campaign that is not an RPGA campaign in the Chicago area.

Let me know whatchu got

-Joshua O'Connor-Rose
-All is Good

 

[scottdunphy]

RP-Artisans Test

Hi, I'm Scott Dunphy of RP-Artisans. If you are curious as to the differences between our organization and others, you should check out the 'test' on our site (RP-Artisans.org). Just click on the JoinUs link on the front page.

Scott

 

[RPN Rules Guy]

Pregens vs Classic

Of the three, only the third seems to be doing the thing I joined the RPGA for all those years ago; competitive ROLE playing of pregen characters. One of the reasons I don't go to cons much anymore is that it's hard to find those tables anymore. It's all Living this and Living that. Give me the challenge of playing what hits the table, man, woman or child, that's what really made the RPGA for me.

Thanks for the information, Mythusmage. It's worth a look, at least.

All RPN adventures come with pregenerated characters, although you are free to create an ongoing character as well. I know that's not really what you're looking for, though. You're looking for pure "Classic" events. We don't have any of those yet, but we will definately take submissions for those kind of adventures.

-Greg G
RPN Rules Guy