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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 2252193" data-attributes="member: 3146">There are a few things to keep in mind about the RPGA:First, the play experience will vary widely depending upon the campaign, region, and people.The people and region you're playing in should be no-brainers. Captain Obvious makes statements like "D&D games will be dramatically different expereinces with different people." That's true for normal D&D games and it's true for the RPGA.The campaign is also something that should be a no-brainer, but tends to get overlooked in general discussions of "the RPGA." Nobody would expect Pete's Midnight game to be the same experience as Joe's Forgotten Realms or Susan's Talislanta/Cthulu crossover game. You would expect that, in one, an adventuring party might have a formal charter and play options are severely restricted, and another has a more lasseize fair attitude. Well, that's true of the RPGA as well. The RPGA isn't just one campaign. In fact, the different campaigns will generate somewhat different experiences.  In the Living Greyhawk campaign, for instance, treasure division is abstracted (though obviously based on the "sell everything at half price and buy it out of your share if you want it" method). There are then some rules for what you can buy and what you can't. (Generally, you can buy things you've found in the adventure or that you find if you run into people who will sell it to you). Character creation, on the other hand, is fairly straightforward. You don't need any cards or anything like that, and with a few exceptions (mostly Sandstorm stuff that's allowed for characters created for a new Bright Desert module series), it's all available to everyone.Living Arcanis is somewhat different. You divide up the treasure at the table after every mod which means that sometimes your party of first level adventurers finds a +2 amulet of natural armor and someone walks away with that while everyone else gets nothing. The concrete method of treasure resolution is a lot more flexible but takes more time and can sometimes lead to conflict. As for character creation, all of the options are available to you right out of the gate. It's either allowed or it isn't so there's no "you need a card to play this."The Ebberon and Legacy of the Green Regent campaigns are the most abstract of all in their record keeping. You just print off your character record which tells you how much gold you have and you buy equipment out of it. It doesn't need to stay the same from mod to mod and, for the most part, it's just assumed that you found whatever you want. Character creation in both campaigns uses a variety of cards to open up various options from the Ebberon, Forgotten Realms, or Complete books.Living Death and Living Force, etc, I've not played at all, but they're different in their own ways, I"m sure.As for the modules, I'd say they're a mixed bag. In general, I think they're about as good as what you'd find at a randomly chosen con game if you exclude a good chunk of the worst ones as well as the really good non-traditional (no combat, etc) ones. In general, however, they're pretty good and a good DM can make nearly any of them into an enjoyable experience. (I'm partial to the ones I've written, but there are a lot of good authors out there).So, how do RPGA games compare to generic homegames? Well, in general, they're less tailored to the particular characters and tend to be less player driven than some home games can be. This is good for some game groups (I remember watching my home group flounder about looking for "the adventure" when I decided to try letting the players direct the story rather than doing it myself). However, it's the tailoring to particular characters and groups that is probably the main strength of a home game vis a vis RPGA games. You're probably not going to have your archnemesis stalking you for ten levels in an RPGA game. In most of the campaigns, you'll have shorter, more discrete adventures.So why would you play an RPGA campaign as a home game?1. You don't have a steady and reliable group. The RPGA enables you to play games with a wide variety of different people and still maintain continuity of character and know that nobody's bringing in a +5 vorpal holy sword of doom that their "previous DM" gave their character. It also lets people who missed a session catch up in experience, etc. outside the immediate group. With the RPGA, you can have a regular game with 6-8 people, some of whom are likely to miss any given session, and a few other people who play with the group occasionally.1.5. The RPGA is also good for playing more D&D without being tied to a fixed schedule. For instance, I play in a home game on Monday nights, but I enjoy playing more often than that. I'm not interested in starting a second group though. So, I play Living Greyhawk and Living Arcanis some weekends or at cons in addition to the home-game.2. If you don't have a consistent DM. With RPGA modules, you can switch DMs every session and everything will more or less keep on humming. My home group keeps several campaigns running (3 or four of us DM and we switch campaigns every few months), but sometimes we reach a stopping point in one campaign and nobody's ready to pick up theirs. At that point, we often play a Living Greyhawk game or two while the next DM preps his campaign.3. Your DM doesn't want to write his own stuff--or isn't any good at it. The RPGA modules--or at least the majority of the Living Greyhawk and Living Arcanis modules--compare fairly well to other published modules. In that case, running an RPGA campaign as your home game seems like a reasonable alternative to buying and running modules. It will tend to be different since RPGA mods are designed to run in 4 or 8 hours and a lot of published mods are longer than that. Then again, short stories are just as good a form of fiction as epics and Living Arcanis at least ties a lot of its modules plots together to form a larger tapestry so it might come closer to a mini-series or a Bablyon-5 style TV series in form.Outside of that, the RPGA is a great way to meet gamers and get to know different playing styles. Since most games will be one offs (with that particular group of people at least), you can meet a variety of gamers and if they suck it's not like they're a part of your gaming group. They're just people you met once for an RPGA game. If they're good, on the other hand, you can game with them more often.</blockquote>

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