Hatin' the RPGA? (Forked Thread: The real flaw of 3E/3.5E/OGL)

[Shemeska]

From the context of the thread that it was forked from, there seems to be an underlying assumption that too much variability is bad for RPGA games, so WotC has the incentive to reduce variability in D&D to cater to the RPGA. However, since variability is good for a home game, this means that the RPGA has a negative effect on the quality of home games.

Given what you said, I'd really be interested in knowing if the changes to FR in 4e were decided upon before or after it was decided that FR was going to be the primary RPGA setting with Living Forgotten Realms.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The RPGA seems to be an outlier group with a disproportionate effect on how the game is designed; specifically, a game designed for RPGA play doesn't often meet the actual requirements of a home game (and, probably, vice-versa). Some of the goals are compatible, but others are not, and the RPGA has a louder collective voice than "home gamers."

 

[kitsune9]

I enjoyed the RPGA overall and played since 2nd ed Living City. My only complaint was that when Living Greyhawk was getting big, my triad that controlled our region kept changing the organizations and set-up several times that changed character concepts altogether, so there was no consistency and at the beginning, the RPGA banned 90% of any material that was being produced by WotC unless it was on a cert. They did relent in 3.5 and allowed more sourcebooks without needing certs.

Probably my other complaint was that quite a few RPGA mods were brutally hard. My core group, when we ordered mods, always played down on the APLs, and even then, we still had near TPKs in a lot of mods.

But overall, playing RPGA games was fun and some of the series that were written were really cool. I also liked the time units, gp limits, and meta-organizations and I use them in my home campaign for balance management and to allow player characters to do off-game stuff like create magic items, do profession checks, etc.

 

[Piratecat]

A few of the comments that have been stated here as fact might deserve a rebuttal. Before I do, though, it's worth saying that I'm out of touch with today's RPGA. I don't care for the Living campaigns, so I haven't judged or played in a RPGA game in several years.

Back in the 1990s, I played or ran about 400 RPGA "classic" games (the ones with pre-generated characters). Doing this has vastly changed my life for the better. F'rinstance, I became a better player and a much better DM. The first adventures I wrote were for the RPGA, and the feedback forms at the end of each game did a great job of getting rid of my bad habits as a DM. I managed to snag the best GM at Gencon award for a few years, and that's only because the RPGA had taught me about pacing and roleplaying.

More importantly, I met dozens of people who are amongst my best friends today. The Classics players were a community, a lot like EN World but before internet messageboards. I'd go to cons to see my RPGA buddies as much as to play. At any given game you'd have one person you didn't like much, a couple people who were okay, and one person who was truly great to play D&D with; I just made a point of keeping in touch with those folks.

My interest in the RPGA faded when Classics became less popular, and when judge voting was eliminated. Both of those things really helped drive my interest. Luckily, Eric Noah's site emerged about the same time, and the "family reunion" at cons became people from here instead of the RPGA.

So I think the organization has done great things for me. It's screwed up a lot over the years, too, but anything that gets people out and gaming with relative strangers is a good thing.

 

[Drkfathr1]

It's kind of a catch-22. For organized play they have to stick to certain rules and standards, just to keep things running the same at every venue. It would never work if every DM used his own house rules.

But yeah, its a shame so much of WotC's design focus takes the RPGA into account.

 

[Krensky]

My dislike (hate is WAY to strong a word) of the RPGA largely comes down to too many experiences with members who are not the sort of people I want to play with.

As for the effect on the game, I do know that Living Spycraft and the RPGA were a large part of some of the baroque design and fiddly language in Spycraft 2.0. I don't see why D&D would be immune to this.

 

[kitsune9]

RPGA and home games are nothing a like I can tell you that. The overall benefit is being able to play wherever you go in the world as long as there are other members of the RPGA in that location.

A lot of the hate for RPGA comes from the old days when, as mentioned, there was a more competitive feel to the organization. That was mainly the result of the certificate system that was being used. There would be a number of items for each module you could attain as a group and everyone got at least one item. You couldn’t play the adventures more than once back then which was the biggest reason for the competitive nature. For example if there was a +3 Flaming Tongue Sword in the module and you had two fighters at the table who both wanted it a problem was sure to arise, regardless of how it ended someone was going to be upset. Then add in the trading aspect that was allowed and you had people deliberately taking good items they didn’t need so they could trade them later for something else. I played in several games where a player came straight out and admitted that was the reason they were bidding on an item, knowing others at the table had a valid need for it.

I remember dicing off for certs in Living City days and yes, it was upsetting to end up being the only player who gets nothing other some gold pieces and no certs and sit next to other players who have every single cert in the campaign. Toward the end of 2e RPGA, I had quit trying to get certs and just played.

The good thing was when they abandoned the cert system and went to the adventure record system which made any item available in the mod available to players who had enough gold to obtain it. Also, just getting "mundane" magic items by setting GP limits without needing to have cert for it, was also a big help too.

Another downside to RPGA is that you can get stuck with rules lawyers from hell who for very good reason can’t find a gaming group. I remember playing one year at GenCon and having a player argue with the DM, who happened to be one of the contributors to 3rd ed. (Unfortunately I don’t recall which writer, I want to say Monte Cook or Sean Reynolds but that was eight or nine years ago. My memory is horrible.). So you can imagine what it’s like for someone not as versed as someone who didn’t work on the rules first hand. Nothing shuts down a game quicker than people arguing over a game or having to wait for a senior judge to make a ruling because someone decided to argue with the judge or another player.

I would be that rules lawyer if my character's death was involved only because it's a lot more at stake than my character dying in a home campaign, but I see your point. Rule lawyers just to hold up the game for no particular reason isn't too fun.

The RPGA can be very cliquish. During the competitive years and even still today players got use to playing with certain people either forming teams our they were members of a local game club that did RPGA events. Going to a convention for the first time can be a real eye opener when you’re trying to find a table to join and everyone of them is filled with people who don’t want you because they already have a full table and don’t want to split their group because they have developed tactics as a team; even if they two fighters and need a cleric. Granted that’s an extreme but trying to fit in can be a little a nerving to some people and could be easily seen as being excluded because of it.

Yes, quite true. Play enough games in a region and one learns who the cliques are. Luckily for me, con organizers have extra games for the "excluded" (in my area) so I never got booted out of actual game that I paid or signed up for, but I have been reassigned tables several times for that same game. For example if there are two versions of a core mod and I was assigned table 2A, I would get reassigned to table 2b.

Another reason for cliques though was that RPGA mods could be brutally tough and you needed to have players you can trust to not screw up since character death represents a significant amount of time, energy, and gold wasted. When we ordered mods for our home tournaments, we didn't post open sign-ups. It was exclusively the seven of us because we knew each other's play style, had characters to round out the table, and overall helped us survived the mod.

The RPGA has also had a heavy influence on the game as mentioned, especially concerning products and input. RPGA members are the largest fan base that WotC interacts with at major conventions. Sometimes I think WotC forgets that RPGA members don’t represent every player in the world when it comes to asking them for input before they make decisions. Though WotC has since turned away from that mentality over the last couple of years, the current party size focus of four players serves as an example when compared to six player focus in previous editions. I don’t fault WotC having done that in the past since the RPGA does represent a fair portion of their consumer base and serves as an excellent marketing tool.

I remember arguments at my own core group about this. One player made the RPGA practically the Illuminati that pulled WotC's strings and another player said WotC didn't care about the RPGA or their opinions which was why the RPGA banned most of WotC's books. I never took a position on this, but it's interesting how diverse this argument goes.

The RPGA had to streamline a lot of the rules so that the game is balanced for everyone in the past and even today they do it to some extent, but not as much as before. People couldn’t play a lot of the classes or races they wanted to in the past. WotC has made and effort to change that in the new Living Campaigns starting with Living Forgotten Realms. Most every class and race is playable and exceptions can be gained via game play and acquiring Player Advantage cards which give access to restricted feats or races.

Yeah, I was one of those people who hated that WotC produced all those books, and 90% of it was banned unless there was an adventure record with item listed in it. Even then, the banned list of items for authors was long. In 3.5, RPGA did relent some and the pages and pages of banned stuff decreased and made more stuff as open content which was nice.

Time constraints tend to be a problem when dealing with the RPGA. Most of the modules are designed to be played in four or six hours which limits role-playing at times depending on the amount of combat and the group you’re playing with. This becomes a real problem at conventions where multiple games are scheduled in time blocks. In recent years the time allotment has tended to be stretched to six hour increments to allow more playing time, but in the past the four hour block was a major hindrance. Still it is possible to run out of time and before to quit a session when you’d prefer to continue.

Yep, I remember this too. Four hours was just too short for the con games, but most of the games we played were home tournaments so we played for six to seven hours to hit all the encounters and take our time.

 

[UniversalMonster]

The RPGA has changed drastically not only in the last two decades, but also, just in the last year. For example:

RPGA is 100% free. Free as in beer!

There isn't just one RPGA style of game. There's several! There are living campaigns, delve events, one offs (like Beyond the Door which ran at DDXP this year), The D&D Championship (formerly the D&D Open)... and probably more.

NOTHING is banned in RPGA anymore. All Wizards of the Coast releases (including everything that comes out in Dragon or Dungeon or DDI) is legal for RPGA play. (That is, once it ends up in the end-of-month compilation). That means if you want to play a minotaur (from DDI) invoker (from PHB2) in Living Realms, you can. I actually have a minotaur rogue. She's awesome!

The Living campaigns (the only one right now is Living Forgotten Realms) are a bit of a special case: imagine if you had to organize a D&D campaign.. for 21,000 players! Still, we do manage, and it's a lot of fun. The cool thing about the living campaigns is you can adventure with any one of these other players, and as you level up, you can bring your character with you to any LFR adventure that your character is high enough level to play. We also have LFR adaptions of certain adventures: so if you want to play Scepter Tower of Spellgard, or Menace of the Icy Spire (from Dungeon) your LFR character can get credit for those too.

Living Forgotten Realms is also actually really nicely optimized for home play. We currently have around 30 Forgotten Realms adventures that are free and orderable in the system, and much more to come. You don't have to play them at conventions. Where I live, we run 2-3 LFR adventures every single Thursday night at the local shop. I've also run them at my house, at a private gaming club, at my friends apartment, and at the library.

Also: Items have literally not been certed for years. Nothing is really certed in LFR except for story awards, and those are so you can remember them. (So for example if you helped out some NPC when you were first level, and then that NPC pops up again when your 8th level, you can go through your little collection and go "Oh wait, my character knows this guy..and he owes me a favor"

LFR DMs are empowered to run adventures as they like. LFR DMs can get rewards.. one of the things we are going to be getting is free "exclusive" dungeon tiles with ships on them, I heard.

LFR DMs who run slots at one of the big conventions can get pretty good rewards like going to Gen Con free and staying in the hotel for free. At the big shows (GenCon and DDXP) we often get free swag like books and minis and map tiles and stuff. It's a pretty good deal.

Items and such are recorded on your character journal. We do have a limit of one "found" item per level as a way to manage character wealth. But your character is free to purchase items of up to his level.

It's a lot of fun! If you go to GenCon or something, try it out. It's absolutely the funnest thing you can do at GenCon.

Full disclosure: I've been involved in Living Realms as a player point of contact for the northeast US since just before 4E was released. It's an amazing way to meet people!

 

[exile]

I'd like to take a few lines to throw some support in the direction of the RPGA (and organized play in general- which for me amounts to the RPGA + Paizo's Pathfinder Society).

I live in the middle of nowhere. I have trouble finding a home game here in Somerset, KY. The infrastucture of the RPGA (and to a lesser extent PFS) makes it possible to find games that I can at least travel to. That same infrastructure has helped me to almost assemble my own group here in Somerset. Additionally, my work schedule is both intense and erratic, making it hard for me to attend a game on a regular basis, much less prep for any game that I have to run. Given that LFR and PFS adventrues are written for relatively broad level ranges (and I have several characters of varying levels), I can almost always find a table appropriate for a character that I have.

Forgetting availability for a minute, Organized Play games are also fun for me. I hate to say that I have played with bad DMs over the years, because they have actually been pretty good as far as I am concerned, but home games that I have been involved in have the problem of not getting very far very fast. They get derailed by alcohol or off-topic talk (which was more okay when I was younger and could play 3 times a week, but it sucks now). Sure this can happen with RPGA games (though I have never seen it in a convention environment-- or in a home-RPGA environment), but I think there is something to be said for the 4-6 hour time restriction. It kind of forces people to get stuff done.

So anyway, thumbs up RPGA (and PFS).

Chad

 

[Piratecat]

Peter's point is a good one. The RPGA many of us are remembering is no longer the RPGA that currently exists -- and a problem with one region is unlikely to exist elsewhere.