I've been playing and DMing for the RPGA since 2000, and most of my experiences have been good.
Firstly, you must acknowledge that the RGPA has two types of campaigns - Living Campaigns, and their D&D Campaigns.
Living Campaigns are run almost exclusively by volunteers.
D&D Campaigns are completely administered by the RGPA staff (3 or 4 people).
The D&D Campaigns (Legacy of the Green Regent and Mark of Heroes) have both suffered tremendously because of missed deadlines. For this I blame the RPGA. Not their staff, who I believe are completely snowed under almost all the time, but the organisation as a whole, which has started these campaigns but fails to support them as much as they should. Some people don't like the style of these campaigns, but the style doesn't bother me.
Some of the Living Campaigns are member-run, and the only thing the RPGA really does for them is to register and distribute the scenarios. The number of modules they produce a year, the style of campaign, and the rules for the campaign will all be determined by the campaign management. I believe most of the member-run campaigns are run as a vehicle to sell a campaign setting, but I don't think there is anything wrong with that.
Of the other Living Campaigns I only have experience with one - Living Greyhawk.
The Living Greyhawk campaign is massive. As someone above stated, with all the modules available from each region, meta-region and the cores, there is about 300 modules each year. Most players will only visit a handful of regions regularly, and so can only access maybe 100 modules a year, but that's 2 a week, every week.
I can travel to another region, find a games day or convention being organised, and join in. That's pretty powerful.
I also run a home campaign with players I met through our local games days. This allows us to run with a consistent group, playing the same characters, etc. Note that you could also choose to do this with any of the RPGA campaigns - if you don't want to bother designing a campaign yourself, just organise to run a home campaign of your preferred setting.
If you and a group decide to just use the RPGA as a module base, you can do that, and change the modules how you want, just don't try to take your characters to a games day, convention, etc.
Someone suggested that perhaps the RPGA should use published adventures - there are inherant difficulties in this. The cost, the ability to cheat by reading an adventure before playing it (to get that edge), the availability of the adventure are all reasons that this would be problematic. To run RPGA games now all you need is internet access (to download them), and the ability to print them out.
As for Classic games - I have only ever played one or two Classics at Conventions - Australian conventions didn't bother with them much. But we did write our own adventures for cons. I do miss those at times - it was nice to pick up different characters and have to play them straight away, but if I attend conventions I can still play that type.
If you are looking for games to join in on, just go to the
RPGA Events Calendar, enter the location details and dates, and you will see all the open events booked for that location. You can click on the event to see what games they are offering, and email the person who booked the events to find out about their meeting details (although they might list them in the event booking information, I would recommend emailing the person who booked the event and letting them know your interest). It's not perfect, but it is a way to find games in your region.
Between the 9th of August and tonight I will have participated in 6 RPGA games across two different campaigns, having played in 2 and DMing 4, and on Saturday I'm down to play another game and possibly DM another two (depending on the number of turnouts at our monthly games day, which most of the other games recently were in preparation for). And I haven't (directly) spent any money to do so - I think that's pretty good.
For the people who were complaining about mailing in memberships, you can do it electronically. So long as you have a membership form to fill in, just give the card to the player (so you know the number is used) and then report a game with that number at the table. The reporting system will then tell you that it doesn't know the number, and asks you to enter a name. Once that is done the player will be able to log into the RGPA site and enter their details. If they then pass the online Herald-level test (which used to have a number of errors in the questions, not sure if it still does) they will be sent a plastic card.
Oh, and it's important to know that RPGA numbers have been growing about 30% a year since 3.0 was released. That sounds reasonably successful to me, given the RPGA is a marketing exercise (I might not care for Madonna's music, but I can't deny she sells a lot of albums ;-).
Duncan
by letting them develop unique and separable areas of the continent of the Flanaess that another region's "managers" don't get to screw around with.
