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Should Organized Play Influence The Rules?

How much should organized play influence the rules of the next edition of D&D?


I put somewhat. Organized Play should run well with the core rules out of the box. Home play is too fractured to give any semblance of a unified viewpoint. Look at the variety of responses just in talking about the 3 pillars or even just exploration. OP gives a more even keeled play test platform. So the rules shouldn't be catering to OP, but OP should be using the base rules without much deviation.
Setting specific rules should be left to setting splats or Living X type documents. No need to burden home games with the minutiae of OP record keeping and balancing attempts.
 

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People will not enjoy organized play very much if it uses an almost entirely different set of rules. Living Forgotten Realms is already different enough from the Fourth Edition to make me leery of joining up.
 

I don't think the issue with OP is that it influences the rules as they first come out; the issue is that it is the main driving force for the pages and pages of balance changes and errata we see.
 

Not to quibble here, but I googled game stores in Antioch and the only thing that came up is extreme games and its only open 40 hours a week.

1 store that cant afford to hire an extra body to open up before noon 6 days a week and is flat out closed on wednesdays is hardly what i would call "thriving".

Try Googling Grayslake, IL; Mount Prospect, IL; and Kenosha, WI for just a few examples of thriving game stores in my area. Kenosha is one town over, Grayslake 2 towns, and the farthest example in Mount Prospect is no farther away from home than my daily commute. Never mind that Antioch is part of the greater Chicago/Milwaukee metropolitan area. Antioch does not sit isolated in a desert. :erm:
 
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People will not enjoy organized play very much if it uses an almost entirely different set of rules. Living Forgotten Realms is already different enough from the Fourth Edition to make me leery of joining up.

But neither will people enjoy their home games if organized play(which is arguably dominated by power-gamers) is constantly rolling out ban-lists and restrictions and so on for the game as a whole.
 

Try Googling Grayslake, IL; Mount Prospect, IL; and Kenosha, WI for just a few examples of thriving game stores in my area. Kenosha is one town over, Grayslake 2 towns, and the farthest example in Mount Prospect is no farther away from home than my daily commute. Never mind that Antioch is part of the greater Chicago/Milwaukee metropolitan area. Antioch does not sit isolated in a desert. :erm:

1 per city is not a thriving base of business. We have better then that here in vegas and I consider it a complete dessert compared to 10 or 15 years ago.
 

No, No, No.


Design the game for play on a tabletop.

Adapt the game for play in organized play.


Anything else would be Madness...Absolute Madness!:eek:...;)
 

1 per city is not a thriving base of business. We have better then that here in vegas

City? Bunch of small towns in one large metro area. There's more than the three I mention in the suburbs and I didn't even touch upon Chicago proper, which would be a better comparison to Vegas. A thriving base depends entirely on the market. For a niche market like gaming the number of stores in the area is a good indicator. Regardless, I wasn't speaking towards a base of business as you put it, instead the health of individual stores. The store you mentioned in Antioch actually went out of business. There is another one and I'm not sure how it survives. The commonality between the two non-thriving stores? No organized play. Those doing well? Organized play.

and I consider it a complete dessert compared to 10 or 15 years ago.

Hot fudge sundae or banana split?
 

what i consider to be D&D is incompatible with the idea of 5 people who barely know eachother and don't trust the DM at all, meeting every weekend with maxed out optimized chaters in order to be better then the other 4 players, every weekend at the local game shop.

Its not that I don't support organized play, its that I don't think a ruleset exists that could give me what I want, and organized play what it wants.
 

City? Bunch of small towns in one large metro area. There's more than the three I mention in the suburbs and I didn't even touch upon Chicago proper, which would be a better comparison to Vegas. A thriving base depends entirely on the market. For a niche market like gaming the number of stores in the area is a good indicator. Regardless, I wasn't speaking towards a base of business as you put it, instead the health of individual stores. The store you mentioned in Antioch actually went out of business. There is another one and I'm not sure how it survives. The commonality between the two non-thriving stores? No organized play. Those doing well? Organized play.

The one i mentioned had organized play. It was on their calender on the website as happening every tuesday.
 

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