Has the RPGA failed?

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Right now it just looks like a cash grab, IMO (that's why I quit long ago).

A cash grab? How?

Membership is free right now. Modules are free right now.

Cash grab for members maybe. I've gotten so much stuff from them I can almost say that the membership payments I made after I joined in 2000 have been given back in free stuff (minis, chessex grid mats, spell templates, the "fist of emirokol", campaign cards), since they made memberships free.

You quit long ago because it was a cash grab. It ain't anymore. If that one reason was why you dropped membership, you owe it to yourself to check it out again.

 

[MerricB]

Well, yes, technically the RPGA could use all the D&D materials. But they don't--some things are "banned" in Living campaigns. And some things are restricted to NPC's only.

Well, most of the D&D material. (Different things are allowed in different RPGA games).

Let's face it, home campaigns don't use 100% of what is out there!

Living Greyhawk restricts a bunch of stuff; but Mark of Heroes and LGR restrict different things.

Cheers!

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

Membership is free right now.

Ah, I didn't know they stopped charging.

 

[MerricB]

Ah, I didn't know they stopped charging.

Yep, they stopped in 2002, IIRC.

Now the RPGA just sends us free stuff for running and playing in RPGA games.

I should be getting 4 DDM mini repaints, an ice storm plastic template, and 12 player cards in a couple of months. A couple of months ago I got 3 repainted Grim Necromancers, a fireball template, and 9 player cards.

(That's just from home games - although I do play a lot of them!)

Cheers!

 

[Glyfair]

Yep, they stopped in 2002, IIRC.

Sounds right. They stopped charging just after they stopped publishing the Living Greyhawk Journal (except the "lost issue" that appeared months later) and Polyhedron.

Just before it was free, they sent out a battlemat to all the current members of the RPGA (as consolation for having paid for something that was now free). It worked out for me as that was the last month of my paid membership. At that time, I really only was a member for the Living Greyhawk Journal (Polyhedron was OK, but mostly a waste of paper for me). There was no RPGA activity here in Delaware at the time.

 

[Duncan Haldane]

Yep, they stopped in 2002, IIRC.

Well even then there it was possible to have an RPGA number and to play their games for free - it was a level of membership, can't recall what they called it. If you paid you also got the LGJ, etc, but that wasn't essential if you just wanted to play games.

 

[Frank Mentzer]

Roots

As the guy tapped to start the RPGA (by Gary indirectly, through the TSR General Manager Mike Carr & Sales boss Will Niebling), I've been asked to drop by.

Somebody got questions about Roots?

Frank Mentzer
RPGA member # 0000000000002
(I gave #1 to Gary)

 

[Silver Moon]

I was an active member of the RPGA from 1992 to 1999. Kriskrafts and I were also the RGPA coordinators for several New England conventions during that time. It was a great resource back when TSR ran it as it had fairly high standards for module quality and enabled you to find good convention Judges, as they may have played the module at GenCon and were then willing to run it at the local cons during the next year.

I agree with PirateCat that the emphasis on the Living City campaign was when the quality started to go down hill. It became the bread-and-butter for both the RPGA and for conventions who wanted to attract players, but at the expense of the non-Living City offerings. It was great when you could offer a two or three round RPGA tournament, but by say '97 you couldn't get enough players to sign up for them to make them viable offerings. They also began spreading their resources too thin, promoting their Living Jungle and Living Death campaign worlds, neither of which ever really caught on.


Another fumble was when TSR went under and WoTC picked it up. Kriskrafts and I had submitted a number of modules to them in the last days of TSR, which WoTC then ran them as RGPA modules the following year but never paid us for our contributions. From what I hear that happened to a number of other quality contributors as well, which prompted people to stop submitting.

Another group of players became dissatisfacted shortly after the conversion occurred from 2nd to 3rd edition. People had invested a lot into developing their Living City characters and some had even spent hundreds of dollars on magic items at charity auctions for that campaign, only to have RPGA discontinue Living City and start up Living Greyhawk from scratch.

 

[kenobi65]

I heard that RPGA ranks gamers and DMs. As an aside, who's #1 in each category?

They don't do that anymore.

Up until maybe early 2003, the players and DM, at the end of each RPGA module, would vote on who had been the best player at the table (and the players would rate the judge, too). RPGA had a system that took those ratings and translated them into "experience points", and you'd actually go up in levels as a player and a judge. There were Master levels, Grand Master levels, and Paragon levels, and some conventions ran special modules that you'd need to be of a certain level to play in (which I believe a previous poster had referred to).

RPGA scrapped that whole system when they implemented the Player Rewards system. Now, players and judges accumulate "points" for each module played (but there's no voting anymore), and those points are used to determine how many goodies you get in their periodic mailings of Player Reward cards, etc.

There are still levels of Judges (Herald and Master, at least), but you need to pass online tests to achieve those levels.

 

[kenobi65]

My experiences with the RPGA have generally been pretty positive.

I joined RPGA in the late 90s, mostly to get Polyhedron. In 2001, some friends were planning on playing various RPGA games at GenCon, and so I registered and played RPGA stuff throughout that con (the first time I'd ever actually played RPGA games). While I didn't like Living Greyhawk much, I really enjoyed playing Living City and Living Force.

A few weeks later, I discovered an online RPGA community, dedicated to playing RPGA modules online (using chat rooms). Though that group, I've made friends with dozens of other gamers, and we have a core group that plays various RPGA games together online, and gets together at GenCon or Winter Fantasy to play face-to-face.

IME, the campaigns that aren't run by RPGA HQ have been more fun.
- I've played every single Living Force module, and while I'm looking forward to the finale next year, I'm sad that it looks like there won't be a follow-up RPGA SW campaign.
- Living Death is also very enjoyable, though it's a bit harder to find a table, even online.
- I've just started into Living Arcanis, which is a fascinating setting.
- I played all the Living Dragonstar modules, and was sad to see that campaign go, too (when Fantasy Flight Games pulled the plug on the game line, that was the end for LDS).
- I enjoyed Living Spycraft, though I found it hard to keep up with all the rules options, and "gearing up" was always a pain.