Has the RPGA failed?

[JoeGKushner]

After speaking with Eric from Paradigm at Gen Con, I think I'm going to have to kook into this a bit more. It sounded like there was a ton of great games being run throuh the RPGA and that like some card games, the players could actually effect the game setting.

Now I just have to start looking into it...

 

[qstor]

Getting in on this a bit late....This thread seems to come up every few months...

For my RPGA experiences..I've organized conventions, game days, judged twice at GenCon, once this year and another time in 2001, played, DM'd. I've played with Endur a few times too I joined in 2000 for Living Greyhawk because I was a huge fan of the setting. I was around an RPGA *club* (the RPGA used to have a club program in the late 1990's) in Michigan for the 2e period of Living City but all the PC's where high level and I didn't want to start in LC. So I joined for the starting of Living Greyhawk.


I've also written four RPGA Living Greyhawk modules. I think over all my experinces have been positive as well. As for newer players, at the conventions I've run, I've always made time to sit down and help players create a new character. I think if the game day organizer didn't do that its a very POOR decision on their part and shouldn't reflect on the over all RPGA community.

I've made a lot of friends amoung the RPGA players here in the area. It's mostly where I get my gaming now a days. I play mostly Living Greyhawk and Living Kalamar. A lot of people I know like Living Arcanis as well but personally the setting really isn't my cup of tea, but thats just me its like arguing over which is better the Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk.

I've played Living Force and Living Death too. I'm kinda upset that Force is closing off at Winter Fantasy 2006. I hope they're able to create a new sci-fi campaign.

What I enjoy is playing my characters in an established setting and rule system that I know pretty well. I had some bad experiences with a DM that mixed 2e and 3e rules in a *home* style game and haven't really found a DM with the kinda game I'm looking for, so I gravitate to the RPGA games. I've attempted to run home games but with players busy schedules and people moving and getting new jobs and new children coming into their lives, the games have kinda broken down. So I can DM and play my PC's at various RPGA events from Winter Fantasy to GenCon and local cons here. Players I know have traveled to GenCon Europe as well with their PCs, so there's protability of the characters which I think is a good thing to some respect.

Are there downsides? SURE just like with everything, does WOTC push the marketing angle too hard sometimes? Sure..and I feel at times they loose site that the RPGA should be for the members and not the almightly dollar or pound I wish that other games like Shadowrun or Call of Cthulhu still have a place in the RPGA. I hope that new campaigns like Living Death which is also ending and Living Force can be continued in some respects.
I think the horrible editing, poor campaign managment and limited campaign length are reasons why the Dungeons and Dragons campaigns of LotGR and Mark of Heros are NOT they way for the RPGA to go in the future. If so I'll probably drop out..I've run and played both those campaigns but I think those campaigns are not what the majority of players want.

I also want to reflect the opinions that Living Greyhawk regions are varied. I used to live *sigh* in Maryland where I was born and raised. The Living Greyhawk region there is Geoff. Geoff as well as Wisconsin (Highfolk) are very often rated in the top five regions for overall quality. Where I live now unfortunatly is at the bottom. (This is from a survey done by the LG campaign staff a few years ago) I'm trying to help out by writing mods and trying to improve the quality. I was asked to volunteer for the local Triad but unfortunatly I don't have the time to devote to that but still enjoy judging and writing. So my advice if your region sucks, try and help to make it better.

As for people complaining about the RPGA someone once (IIRC it was Jae Walker the old head of Living Force) said "That if who give people a free donut they'll complain it has a hole in it" Some of the complaints are well founded and there are issues that need to be addressed...But I wouldn't say as a whole the RPGA has failed.

Mike McKeown

 

[JoeGKushner]

Looked around the web site.

Took the herald GM test.

Man, some of those questions are very obscure if you don't have the books in front of you.

Have to do that again some times.

 

[Zenodotus of Ephesus]

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)

Tell us about those early days, please. How quickly did it get started and what were the goals? How did Poly start up? What were the growth rates like?

Thanks for dropping in, FM!

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

In addition, back then the only type of games were modules with pre-generated characters (and pre-generated personalities.) Stepping into a completely foreign PC personality taught me to be a good roleplayer, and I've made great friends with some astonishingly good roleplayers as a result. I have dozens of friends who I wouldn't have if not for the RPGA, people who I love dearly. They liked the same sort of games I did, and we tended to draw together over the years.

Then Living Games started to erode the "classic" pre-gen games. Most people wanted to create their own replayable PC, so fewer players played pre-gen games. That meant that fewer of the good authors wrote them any more, which meant that the games you could play weren't very good. The RPGA completely alienated me when they even removed the character interactions from "classic" characters, giving me no reason whatsoever to play in their tournaments.

I totally agree. I used to go to a local Con and play in the AD&D tournaments, that were pre-gen characters and one shot, or sometimes multiday 2 part adventures, and it was a blast. Now everything is the Living games and I don't even bother anymore. I've read the setup and way those games run and it seems very lame to me. So if I go to a con I'm pretty much screwed if I want to get into D&D game and play a character that I'm not expecting and have fun trying to role play it. Never played a female elf druid other than at a con, and it was fun. Same with a halfling fighter. Cool characters that had notes on personality and such that let me get a handle on them and play them "right". A lot of fun.

I don't really go to cons anymore since I usually will have to try and hunt down some pickup game if I can find one, unless I want to make up a L1 character according to the Living rules and restrictions. No thanks. And I don't want to run a one shot game myself since I always DM in my group and I'd like to play a bit sometimes. When I went to Archon in 2003 I wanted to play a game of 3e since I've only DM'ed it, but the only option I had was to create a 1st level PC and I just said "Oh well." I do have the Hearld level GM card or whatever you call it, but I've never played a game with it.

 

[kenobi65]

I've played Living Force and Living Death too. I'm kinda upset that Force is closing off at Winter Fantasy 2006. I hope they're able to create a new sci-fi campaign.

Living Force had, from the start, been planned as a five-year campaign, and thus, had always been scheduled to end late this year / early next year. The real question is whether the RPGA will start a new Star Wars (or sci-fi) campaign when LF wraps up. Given WotC has had the SWRPG "on hold" for the past year-plus, with no signs of that changing in the foreseeable future, a new SW campaign looks highly unlikely.

As far as a non-SW sci-fi campaign, it's possible that they would do something with d20 Future, but I'm not holding my breath for that, either.

I think the horrible editing, poor campaign managment and limited campaign length are reasons why the Dungeons and Dragons campaigns of LotGR and Mark of Heros are NOT they way for the RPGA to go in the future. If so I'll probably drop out..I've run and played both those campaigns but I think those campaigns are not what the majority of players want.

I've read Ian Richards (the head of RPGA) say that they believe that there are different kinds of players out there, who want different things out of RPGA campaigns. He believes that the D&D Campaigns model serves some players very well, and recognizes that it isn't for everyone. I agree with you; I fervently hope that the D&D Campaigns format does *not* become the standard.

Parenthetically, there's a fairly new organization out there called NAGA. It seems to be serving as an umbrella organization for several independent "living-style" campaigns, such as Legends of the Shining Jewel (which was a spin-off of the old Living City). It'll be interesting to see how groups like that fare, as the RPGA continues to evolve.

 

[StupidSmurf]

Dropping by a bit late, but thought I'd give my two-cents worth.

I was a member of the old RPGA (member # 18996), and I loved the old Polyhedron (my oldest issue is #12). It was my impression that the RPGA was there to organize and promote gaming and keep gamers in contact with each other. If you want to call it marketing, so be it, since marketing can be defined as the process of promoting a product/service

Here's what I remember that was good/right about the old RPGA:

1. Nifty free stuff if you formed an RPGA club (our was the Valiant 13th Regiment).
2. Club tournaments at different cons. Meet other clubs! Start a rivalry! Win a trophy!
3. A system of journeyman/master/grand master players and DMs, that rewarded good RP.
4. The ability for RPGA clubs to playtest TSR stuff (ours helped playtest AD&D 2nd Ed).
5. A certain baseline quality/standards for adventures run at cons. While they weren't all perfect, and some stunk, the odds were that if you played an RPGA tourney you could reasonably expect a decent time and something that actually adhered to the rules system featured.
6. And this one is the most unforgettable for me: One of the biggest complaints I've had in the past about gaming at cons is no-show DMs (GMs, Keepers, whatever). You plunk down your two bucks, get your ticket, allocate the time slot to play, show up, and BAM...no DM. Congratulations, you're hosed. With the RPGA, at least with my experiences at GenCon starting with Gen Con XVIII, you were guaranteed a seat at a table. And if something got messed up, like advancement to the next round, they straightened it out. I still recall RPGA high-mucky-mucks running around with walkie-talkies, trying to place me at a table when I was accidentally omitted from advancing because someone got my name wrong.
7. Club decathalons! Yeah! Great stuff! Your club would participate in a number of events throughout the year, such as playing in various tournaments, or designing a 1-round adventure, or a new item, etc. One year, there was even a skit contest, which our group came in first place and got a nifty trophy!
8. Oh, and the RPGA WAS a good way to hook up with people in your area who were looking for a game, especially in those bad old days before the Internet. Ah yes, I remember them well. Me with my Apple IIc, trying to log on to GEnie...ah yes....I had to walk uphill in the snow, both ways, to access a server in those days. And we didn't have those fancy-schmancy mice. Nossir. You used a keyboard and you were glad for it...and..huh? OH..yeah. Sorry. Anyways.... Yeah, the RPGA was a good way to find players...in fact, through the RPGA, we found a gamer who lived LESS THAN A MILE from my house. Well, actually the gamer found US. See, the RPGA printed a Member Directory, and this fellow found us listed there. Bam. New player, and the guy also baked amazing apple pies.

Damn....I'm sounding like an old fart here. I apologize, sort of...

I dunno, the RPGA was fun. Sure, a lot of us knew that it was a marketing strategy meant to get more people hooked into playing, but SO WHAT? Wasn't that what we all wanted? More wide-spread acceptance (and perhaps less misunderstandings and game product burnings?)? But the RPGA made it seem like we were all one big happy family (the Addams Family, perhaps, but a family nonetheless...complete with yelling and screaming sometimes). There was the annual RPGA meeting on the night before GenCon officially began, there was the RPGA breakfast during the con (and they gave out service awards!).

So what was wrong with the RPGA?

THE LIVING CITY. Talk about letting the genie out of the bottle. This got rapidly out of control and became a greedy monster. IMHO, non-Living tournaments suffered when LC got out of control.

I'm sure there was more, but that was the most glaring flaw I saw. There was a lot that was right and little that was wrong about the organization. I miss the old RPGA, and have Zero Interest in the new incarnation.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Pkitty, you are wise.

Create a new RPGA, like what you describe. I wanna join.

The EN.World RPGA

I joined at my first Gencon and like PirateCat found it to be a great resourse but then something changed in it, locally it was over run by munckins that seemed to promote their own group members, then there were some bad games at Gencon over the years, and an issue at their ice cream social at Gencon at few years ago, had material saying I was a current member, they knew me, but badge out of date...no ice cream, that did it in for me.

I also feel they missed out on internet publishing, education, and such, did not take advanage of materials.

 

[jcfiala]

I totally agree. I used to go to a local Con and play in the AD&D tournaments, that were pre-gen characters and one shot, or sometimes multiday 2 part adventures, and it was a blast. Now everything is the Living games and I don't even bother anymore. I've read the setup and way those games run and it seems very lame to me. So if I go to a con I'm pretty much screwed if I want to get into D&D game and play a character that I'm not expecting and have fun trying to role play it. Never played a female elf druid other than at a con, and it was fun. Same with a halfling fighter. Cool characters that had notes on personality and such that let me get a handle on them and play them "right". A lot of fun.

We've still got games like this in Denver. We have a number of independant GMs who like to run one-shot games like this, D&D, Call of Cthulhu, and a mess of other games. (I'm one of them. At Genghis Con in February, I ran two different CoC senarios, and a Space Munchkin senario.

There's even a group - The RP-Artisans - who write up these games and run them, as well as team tournements. (http://rp-artisans.org/tiki/tiki-index.php) Unfortunately, they haven't updated their website in a while.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

We've still got games like this in Denver. We have a number of independant GMs who like to run one-shot games like this, D&D, Call of Cthulhu, and a mess of other games. (I'm one of them. At Genghis Con in February, I ran two different CoC senarios, and a Space Munchkin senario.

There's even a group - The RP-Artisans - who write up these games and run them, as well as team tournements. (http://rp-artisans.org/tiki/tiki-index.php) Unfortunately, they haven't updated their website in a while.

I hadn't been to a con in years but went in 2003 and there were plenty of one shot games if I wanted to play Call of Cthulhu, GURPS, etc. But all the WOTC games I was interested in like Star Wars of D&D were Living Campaigns only, same for Spycraft I think. I may go this year to get in the C&C games since Troll Lord games is going to be there.