The Crapification of Organized Play - Unavoidable?

[Crispy Critter]

I'm going to show my age here and say that WotC ruined organized play when they started Living Greyhawk in 2000. Before that, you had tournament play with premade characters build for the module.

It was great. You got to play in highly themed parties that you wouldn't get in a home campaign (an afternoon of all pirates, all barbarians, all halflings or all whatever) and, with disposable characters, players focused on the role-playing aspects of the game instead of the character advancing aspects of the game. Just as importantly, because the characters were built with the module, you got to play an adventure that was actually about the PCs.

Plus, it was an advancement tournament, so once you got past the first round, the other advancing players were really, really, fun.

Sigh...

I miss those days.

-KS

I guess it's all perspective but I feel WOTC saved OP thanks to Living Greyhawk.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

This is probably a stupid question, but what's a 'judge' in the context of OP? Is it the OP word for DM?

 

[KidSnide]

I guess it's all perspective but I feel WOTC saved OP thanks to Living Greyhawk.

It's certainly true that OP became more popular when LG came out. Most of the popularity was probably due to the fact that 3e was so much more popular than 2e circa 1999, but it's also true that people liked creating their own characters. That having been said, the quality of actual LG adventures was a lot worse than the tournament games of the mid-to-late 90s.

But far me it from me to complain. It's a lot easier to sit through a god-awful adventure when you know you're getting xp...

This is probably a stupid question, but what's a 'judge' in the context of OP? Is it the OP word for DM?

Yes. OP uses the term "Judge" because there are (or, at least, there were) a lot more games than just D&D.

-KS

 

[MatthewJHanson]

Huh, I guess I should go read up on organized play. Cause I'm not really seeing why someone would complain about that in particular as if it is so much different than a DM just running the same adventure at home.

It seems like anything that applies to organized playing would apply just the same for any other home game. Other than the fact that you're playing with players and characters you aren't familiar with. I sure a publishing company has the exact same intent on OP players buying their products as they do home players buying their products.

I think the difference is that in a home game a DM can set more limitations, like "You can only use things from the Player's Handbook 1." You cannot do this with OP.

 

[kitsune9]

I'm not that familiar with organized play.

Can someone briefly tell me what is different between a "judge" in organized play and what a DM does in a home game?

The difference I took from "judge" and DM is that Rule 0 is seriously curtailed. I remember from judging LG that I cannot make rule calls on the fly just to suit my own tastes or deal with someone who is being a pain in butt. Someone could challenge me on that and get me over-ruled by the Triad (three guys who ran the particular region of play). The Triad's rulings were binding. I haven't had this issue come up with me, but I know at some cons, the Triads were busy, particularly if a character died from a bad DM call.

As a judge, you also have to run the adventure as written. Once the APL (average party level) was decided, you couldn't curtail the encounters on the fly to make it more or less challenging. If the party bit off more than they could chew, too bad--TPK. There were a lot of those. You couldn't add encounters if you wanted to. If the party breezed through the encounters, that's life too. To accentuate the point, I don't know of any judge who used a DM's screen. All the dice rolls were out in the open and let the dice fall where they may. Unless you were running a module at home, you had a strict four hour slot in which to run the adventure. If the party didn't complete it in that time frame, you stop the game, fill out ARs for what got accomplished, and the table was done.

Judging was fun for me.

 

[The_Baldman]

I'm going to show my age here and say that WotC ruined organized play when they started Living Greyhawk in 2000. Before that, you had tournament play with premade characters build for the module.

It was great. You got to play in highly themed parties that you wouldn't get in a home campaign (an afternoon of all pirates, all barbarians, all halflings or all whatever) and, with disposable characters, players focused on the role-playing aspects of the game instead of the character advancing aspects of the game. Just as importantly, because the characters were built with the module, you got to play an adventure that was actually about the PCs.

Plus, it was an advancement tournament, so once you got past the first round, the other advancing players were really, really, fun.

Sigh...

I miss those days.

-KS

1 - Everytime we try to bring it back it fails. My large margins.

2 - Membership and play numbers skyrocketed with the new play styles. So while they are not for everybody (yourself for example) they are for the vast majority.

So while they are fun and I myself do enjoy them you are not going to see them as they were unless the player demographics take a huge shift.

 

[Piratecat]

1 - Everytime we try to bring it back it fails. My large margins.

2 - Membership and play numbers skyrocketed with the new play styles. So while they are not for everybody (yourself for example) they are for the vast majority.

So while they are fun and I myself do enjoy them you are not going to see them as they were unless the player demographics take a huge shift.

I know, I know. I'm in the same boat as Kid Snide, and I recognize that the huge surge in Living Greyhawk was (in part) people voting with their feet away from "classic" events. But man do I miss them.

Hey, [MENTION=20741]Steel_Wind[/MENTION]? Feedback (and not an actual moderator request): the large font and colors make your post tougher to read. It's kind of distracting.

 

[smerwin29]

Some of these "classic" (non-Living) events are still being run at various places. PAX East is running one called "The Sun Never Rises" where the pre-gen characters that are provided are a part of the story. As Dave and Kevin say, people have voted with their feet in the "classic" vs. "Living" debate, but some classic-style events are still released each year.

As for the original topic of Organized Play, it is like everything else in life and gaming. When you allow everything that is published in an OP campaign, a percentage of the players walk away in disgust. When you restrict things (sometimes even a few things) in an OP campaign, a different percentage walk away in disgust. And when you force players to read through a long list of banned or restricted rules elements, a percentage of them walk away in disgust.

In the end, the secret will be to create many different programs that promote different experiences, so that people can focus their anger and spite at "the other" and be comfortable in their preferred style.

 

[Steel_Wind]

Hey, @Steel_Wind ? Feedback (and not an actual moderator request): the large font and colors make your post tougher to read. It's kind of distracting.

Part of the problem I find when pasting in a long post from Word is in dealing with spacing and font selection and hidden paragraph hard returns that do not appear in the initial post until after submitted.

As far as I could tell, the message editor was not visibly updating my spacing, font selected properly or size at all - WISWYG or not - and when it finally did, the size was WAY too small. After about five increasingly annoying attempts which appeared to have no visible effect, I said "screw it" and defaulted to using my workflow which I typically use for front page articles -- which DID work -- but made it size 3. By that time I was shaking my monitor screen in frustration so I just said "^&*# it!" and left it alone.

 

[Erik Mona]

There's a fair amount of time-dilation going on in this classics vs. Living Greyhawk debate. To wit, the shift in preferences in RPGA play started years before Living Greyhawk, and really began with the Living City campaign.

Before third edition had arrived, Living campaigns (including Living Death and Living Jungle) were outdrawing classic characters-provided events, and in aggregate a convention like Origins would have had three times as much Living play as classic play. Many regional conventions around 1997 or so were almost completely composed of Living City events, and most game days across the country existed solely to provide Living City play, with no classics on offer.

This is before 2000 and Living Greyhawk. This is before Living Greyhawk had even been conceived.

Classic play endured (even if de-emphasized) at least through 2002, when I was transferred off the RPGA staff and stopped paying close attention. (Tables were still scored at this point, so that didn't have anything to do with Living Greyhawk's launch, either.) I understand classic play ceased completely shortly thereafter, but this was a culmination of long-running trends, and cannot be laid at the feet of LG.

--Erik