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

[dm4hire]

A lot of the advancement in the RPGA over the last couple of years I believe is due in part to the direct control of it by WotC. Where in the past it was allowed to operate somewhat independently from its parent company that stance lent to some of its weaknesses. WotC taking complete control and operating it more as an organized marketing tool has allowed the organization to become more focused and thereby enjoyable to players. While it might be debatable about their recent choice to change the reward program I think WotC nailed it on the head by realizing that the reward for players is more often just being able to play where as the Judges had little incentive. A lack of judges has been a major weakness for the RPGA as well as gaming in general. The ratio of players to judges across the board I am sure you'll agree is disproportional no matter which system we'd examine. WotC changing the RPGA rewards program to focus on judging and gaining more DMs I think will address this issue and hopefully bring about an improvement.

 

[Lord Xtheth]

My fear of the RPGA stems from my days playing Magic: The Gathering and the DCI.

I put a bunch of money into a game to play with my friends. There are already stacks and stacks of rules but my friends and I still enjoy the game.

Along comes this group of people we don't know saying "You can't play that way, you can't use those rules, That option is wrong!"

I'm realy afraid the same thing will happen with "My" D&D. I don't want some group of people I don't know saying the books are meant to be used in "this way, and this way only".

yeah, that's about it

 

[darjr]

I really like and appreciate the RPGA. It is a gift from fans and WotC to fans. The adventures in the LFR are very good. It is a huge benefit and resource.

I run the events as a DM with full fiat flat out. Every adventure even dedicates space to reiterate and reinforce that the DM is the DM and should run accordingly. No strait jackets. No play police.

I'm sorry for those that can't take advantage of the RPGA, I'm having a great time running and playing more on a sustained basis than I ever have. In my local area with four or more stores in my town running RPGA almost everyday of almost every weekend I litterally can't attend everything. Not to mention the RPGA home games spawned from these weekend events. And still attendance grows. I've met a ton of wonderful people, and am meeting more.

If you have a chance to check it out, and have not in a while, you really should.

 

[Ariosto]

I don't know how representative my experience is, but I think I have seen a tendency for DMs not to avail themselves of the leeway in judging that RPGA apparently allows. Had I never refereed an event myself, I might have an impression of more restrictions being imposed.

Players can propagate conventions and assumptions by example among themselves, whether or not RPGA intends them.

I think it's worth repeating that RPGA now costs nothing. Odds are, I think, that if you have an FLGS then you have access to weekly (or more frequent) sessions. All you have to do is show up. There's a membership card with a portion to mail in (no online registration, AFAIK, which may be inconvenient for some). As a practical matter, though, registration simply facilitates record-keeping at the central level. You can play in sessions without registering -- obviously a necessity if one is to be able to play immediately! You're expected to fill in an ID number on the session form, but I've never seen any demand that a prospective player present a membership card. Apart from being inconsiderate (and thereby obnoxious as well as silly), I don't see why one could not request a card as a "new member" each time.

I'll also repeat that I have found it a very welcoming milieu, whereas (and again, my experience may not be representative) I often found players in the 3E era rather off-putting. Someone who does not own a PHB, or even know thing one about D&D or RPGs or wargaming with miniatures, is not going to get looked down on or turned away. Just the opposite: "Please join in!" is likely to be followed after but a few sessions with, "Hey, why don't you DM?"

And when you do DM, you'll get a miniature figurine (or maybe something else, but that's what I've seen) as a tangible sign of appreciation -- on top of the "intangible" rewards and warm thanks from players.

YMMV, but I have not traveled enough to estimate by how much.

 

[DerekSTheRed]

It sounds like many are overestimating the influence the RPGA has over the design of 4E. Individual RPGA member have no say in anything WotC does, but as a group they can sometimes make suggestions to the designers. Ultimately though, the design decisions were made by WotC and they did it for their own reasons.

IMO There can sometimes be a tendancy for WotC to take for granted the loyalty of the RPGA players. WotC knows the RPGA players will be there no matter what and the living campaigns will create their own houserules if they need to do that. WotC made the 4E that they thought everyone would want to play and if it helped the RPGA then that was a bonus.

For example, the RPGA always took the randomness out of character generation. You couldn't assume everyone would be honest with their ability scores or hit die rolls, so the RPGA made those a set amount. This is something I've been doing in my own home games anyway and now it is part of 4E. Not necessarily because the RPGA wanted it that way, but because it's a good idea (I think) in general.

Conversely, the RPGA complained about the lack of guidance for mounted combat during the later stages of 3.x but WotC never adressed it. Turns out they were working on 4E and didn't want another major errata before the end of the campaign.

So from those two examples you have one instance where the 4E designers may have been influenced to change 4E to the way the RPGA did it. However, the other instance of the suggestion to give guidance to all GMs (RPGA or not) was ignored completely.

 

[MichaelSomething]

I didn't know that this was such a multi-faced issue. Everything from standerization in RPGs, the RPGA of the past and present, the influence of the RPGA on 4th Edition, and adventure quality has been metioned. That's a lot of stuff to ponder.

I'm currently playing in the Living Forgotten Realms at my FLGS. The RPGA does have its benefits and can be a great option for certain situations. It's not prefect but I do manage to have fun and I do keep coming back for more.

That reminds me; I need to rewrite my review of the RPGA on my blog...

 

[Lanefan]

Going strictly on reputation and reports, RPGA games have always come across to me as far more hard-core and goal-oriented than the average home game, with tables of players who take it all very very seriously and who can't be bothered with people who don't. A gonzo like me would last about 5 minutes, either through boredom ("where's the chaos?!") or though getting run out for daring to be chaotic both as player and character.

Never mind that as far as I can tell they only support the current edition at any given time, and thus lost any relevance to me in about 1991. (somebody *please* tell me I'm wrong on this!!!)

That, and the standardized rules (any edition) would drive me up the wall; starting with non-random char-gen.

Lanefan

 

[Jeff Wilder]

Back in the 1990s, I played or ran about 400 RPGA "classic" games (the ones with pre-generated characters).

These were the RPGA games that I loved. You'd have tables full of immersed roleplayers with no extra-Con connection to one another. I played some of the best one-shot Shadowrun and Star Wars D6 games in the RPGA.

Then came Organized Play, and it was horrible. And I tried again, and it was horrible. And I tried again, and it was horrible. And the "classic" one-shots didn't exist anymore, so I wrote the RPGA off for anything except reporting my home games and collecting free goodies.

One example from a con in the Bay Area, and this was typical: 2nd- to 4th-level PCs, sent into a mountainous area to find out why people along a trade route were disappearing. I was playing a hugely fat wizard named Mordecai. Also at the table was the head of the RPGA at the time (Robert something, I think, by far the most obnoxious player at the table), who is playing a 4th-level druid. We discover that people are falling afoul (pun intended) to an otyugh in a cave.

Nobody is willing to go into the cave to kill the creature! They're all so concerned with the vague possibility that their PCs might die that the whole point -- adventuring -- just doesn't matter to them. To shame them into, you know, acting like adventurers, my greatsword wielding wizard (with 9 HP) prepares to venture into the cave.

And they let him go. (And of course he was ripped to pieces.) And then they voted me as Best Player. Gah.

Organized Play, as far as I ever saw, was this weird metagame of trying to level up and grab certs without actually adventuring. It was bizarre and horrible.

And that's what the RPGA was for me. (Now, of course, it's irrelevant, since the RPGA and 4E are all bound up together in this weird incestuous tangle.)

 

[roguerouge]

Can I hate the PGA? Stupid Saturday afternoon golf broadcasts....

 

[billd91]

These were the RPGA games that I loved. You'd have tables full of immersed roleplayers with no extra-Con connection to one another. I played some of the best one-shot Shadowrun and Star Wars D6 games in the RPGA.

Those were pretty cool. I played in some back in the 1980s when I was first a member of the RPGA. But they had their problems too. You'd see the same names winning the events at all the cons because they knew how to work the table. Because there was individual advancement from round to round in the tournaments, you did best by monopolizing the attention of the DM. I lost my taste for that in general, but it was fun for a while.

I then spent my time DMing in the Gen Con AD&D Open... until RPGA took it over. Then it went from being a general team-advance game, in which the only reference you ever needed was the PH, to being more of a showcase of new TSR products. Then, you might have needed some FR or Al-Qadim products to play effectively. So I stopped doing that.

The Living Greyhawk campaign brought me back for a while. I liked the idea of the Living Campaigns but they were quite a bookkeeping hassle and I thought they never quite lived up to their potential in developing regional plotlines... and then sharing them and their results with the wider audience.