D&D 4E Really?? Is RPGA really the best place to test 4e
- Thread starter DonTadow
- Start date
Badkarmaboy
First Post
D'Karr-
I was reading posts to an article on the Survivor seaon where it was all racial teams. One of the responses said that folks should get away from old stereotypes and use the cool new ones, like Puerto Ricans and teleport and Chinese people taste like candy. I almost shot diet wild cherry pepsi on my keyboard.
You can has your supernatural ability back
Sorry, back on topic now...
I was reading posts to an article on the Survivor seaon where it was all racial teams. One of the responses said that folks should get away from old stereotypes and use the cool new ones, like Puerto Ricans and teleport and Chinese people taste like candy. I almost shot diet wild cherry pepsi on my keyboard.
You can has your supernatural ability back
Sorry, back on topic now...
Zander
Explorer
We needn't speculate that RPGA members are far from ideal as playtesters; we already know it as a fact. There's a precedent: When 3.0 was being developed, it was playtested by RPGA members. They left in overly complex rules including those for AoOs, grappling and turning undead. All of these things should have been spotted and fixed in playtesting but weren't. The very first time I read the 3.0 PHB and saw these rules, I wondered why they hadn't been identified by the playtesters and returned to the design team for revision. Could it be that the RPGA just wasn't up to the task?
If you develop something (in this case 3E) and the people who were supposed to test it don't do a good job, you shouldn't trust them to test the next generation of whatever it is you're developing (i.e. 4E).
If you develop something (in this case 3E) and the people who were supposed to test it don't do a good job, you shouldn't trust them to test the next generation of whatever it is you're developing (i.e. 4E).
D'karr
Adventurer
Badkarmaboy said:D'Karr-
I was reading posts to an article on the Survivor seaon where it was all racial teams. One of the responses said that folks should get away from old stereotypes and use the cool new ones, like Puerto Ricans and teleport and Chinese people taste like candy. I almost shot diet wild cherry pepsi on my keyboard.
You can has your supernatural ability back
Sorry, back on topic now...
Oh, man I'm glad, I needed to get to China this afternoon and didn't want to worry about airport screening. I thought this was going to be one of those "sucky RPGA House Rules" that would nerf me...
Yes, yes, let's get back on topic...
Admittedly, I haven't played in very many RPGA events, but my experiences have been uniformly negative.
In the four RPGA games I played, there were maybe two or three people who made any kind of effort to RP. Several said virtually nothing during the game except for indicating what their character was doing in combat. (if they had, I don't remember it) Some of the others just did goofy stuff and had no clue how to play the game despite supposedly having played in the RPGA for ages. One was the most blatant munchkin/cheater I ever played with.
On top of it, in the last RPGA game I played in, one of the other players stole my dice bag - the only time I ever had someone steal something from me while gaming. Of course, I'm not trying to say this is indicative of what all RPGA members are like (a couple of the DMs at those god-awful games were perfectly nice people, and did their best despite the lousy players) but it was what made a pretty crappy experience bad enough to make me regret ever bothering with it.
So, no, I really don't think an organisation which made me wish I'd never gotten involved with it at all is one I want to playtest 4E. This is probably unfair to all the nice people I never had the good luck to meet, but the worst members of a group always make everyone else in it look bad.
In the four RPGA games I played, there were maybe two or three people who made any kind of effort to RP. Several said virtually nothing during the game except for indicating what their character was doing in combat. (if they had, I don't remember it) Some of the others just did goofy stuff and had no clue how to play the game despite supposedly having played in the RPGA for ages. One was the most blatant munchkin/cheater I ever played with.
On top of it, in the last RPGA game I played in, one of the other players stole my dice bag - the only time I ever had someone steal something from me while gaming. Of course, I'm not trying to say this is indicative of what all RPGA members are like (a couple of the DMs at those god-awful games were perfectly nice people, and did their best despite the lousy players) but it was what made a pretty crappy experience bad enough to make me regret ever bothering with it.
So, no, I really don't think an organisation which made me wish I'd never gotten involved with it at all is one I want to playtest 4E. This is probably unfair to all the nice people I never had the good luck to meet, but the worst members of a group always make everyone else in it look bad.
Last edited:
Badkarmaboy
First Post
Zander said:
That is akin to saying, "The designers of 3.0 made some overly complex rules decisions. Man, they should never write rules again."
I was not involved in any way with 3.0 as I quit playing D&D with the advent of 2E (I didn't start back until 3.5). Could it be the devs wanted the AoO system to stay?
That being said, I'm sure the folks wotc has chosen to playtest 4E are more than up to the task - both in and out of the RPGA.
smerwin29
Reluctant Time Traveler
OK, let's look at it this way. WotC R&D needs the initial playtesters for 4e (outside of internal playtests). They have some choices about how to go about it:
--They can accept applications from players, and therefore have to weed through hundreds of "gaming resumes" which would mostly say things like "I have a great group, we've been playing since 1976, we would be a great playtest group."
or
--They could go to the RPGA, which has records of how much play time certain judges and players have had, and they can go to Chris Tulach and Dave Christ, who at every large convention get updates directly from players about which DMs and players are good and which are not so good. Chris and Dave could find those who they know are good AND who also have a home group that they play with.
I know what choice I would make. And that does not mean that people outside the RPGA aren't great, aren't legitimate choices for playtesters, and don't deserve the chance to playtest.
The very question in the OP itself is biased and based on a faulty knowledge of the RPGA: "Really?? Is RPGA really the best place to test 4e?" The RPGA is not a place; it is an organization that contains a widely varied group of games and gamers. The assumption that the RPGA is doing the testing is just plain wrong. The assumption that the RPGA members somehow have a bias toward some kind of play style is just plain wrong. As Dave says, you can sit down with a group at one RPGA event and get a totally different play experience than at the very next group. RPGA judges have to be ready and capable to shift gears and handle these different play styles successfully. Not only that, they have to be ready to go between the various RPGA offerings, which, while they all use the D&D3.5 core rules, may have different ways to handling the "DM managed" aspects like level progression, access, allowable rules elements, and method of recording critical events.
The one argument that may or may not have been addressed is the campaign story question. First of all, I don't see how it is relevant for a playtest, or at least an initial playtest. Secondly, the questioning of the RPGA players in relation to a long campaign story makes the complete illogical and invalid assumption that RPGA players don't play long-running home campaigns, which many do. Thirdly, it makes the assumption that RPGA players are somehow disconnected from the over-arching stories of the various campaigns. Some of them may feel disconnected, but that is as much a limitation of their imaginations as it is the campaigns. Certainly when you have a campaign with 10,000+ players, the campaign cannot be personalized like an intimate home campaign can. But that doesn't mean the campaign ignores player involvement, nor does it mean that RPGA players are somehow incapable of engaging themselves in a playtest with an eye toward long-term storytelling.
Right now the RPGA has three active campaigns: Living Greyhawk, Xen'drik Expeditions, and Living Kingdoms of Kalamar. Within the past year, I have written multiple adventures for each one of them, and each of those adventures have been part of a series of adventures in a long-ranging story arc. I can say without a hint of hyperbole or exaggeration that multiple aspects of each of the adventures I've written in all of the campaigns were dictated by player involvement, both in terms of an aggregate (collecting data to see what MOST tables did) and in terms of personal interactions at tables I have run (when an individual player makes the story of the adventure so cool that I just have to include some details of it in the next adventure). Heck, some people whose names I don't even remember have contributed more to my adventures than anything else. So to say that RPGA players are less capable of playtesting because of some sort of deficiency in understanding how a good story-driven campaign is supposed to run is invalid on so many levels.
The assumption that a "real homebrew campaign" player/DM is closer to knowing and using the Core 3.5 rules is invalid, not just because it assumes that RPGA players are incapable of understanding the character progression paradigm as described in the DMG, but also because any given homebrew campaign may vary from the Core 3.5 rules as much, or more than, the RPGA.
So, to answer the question of the title of the thread: Yes, really. Tapping experienced and capable RPGA members who have proven themselves is probably a great way to kick off playtesting. That doesn't mean others can't or shouldn't, but I can't think of a better place to start.
--They can accept applications from players, and therefore have to weed through hundreds of "gaming resumes" which would mostly say things like "I have a great group, we've been playing since 1976, we would be a great playtest group."
or
--They could go to the RPGA, which has records of how much play time certain judges and players have had, and they can go to Chris Tulach and Dave Christ, who at every large convention get updates directly from players about which DMs and players are good and which are not so good. Chris and Dave could find those who they know are good AND who also have a home group that they play with.
I know what choice I would make. And that does not mean that people outside the RPGA aren't great, aren't legitimate choices for playtesters, and don't deserve the chance to playtest.
The very question in the OP itself is biased and based on a faulty knowledge of the RPGA: "Really?? Is RPGA really the best place to test 4e?" The RPGA is not a place; it is an organization that contains a widely varied group of games and gamers. The assumption that the RPGA is doing the testing is just plain wrong. The assumption that the RPGA members somehow have a bias toward some kind of play style is just plain wrong. As Dave says, you can sit down with a group at one RPGA event and get a totally different play experience than at the very next group. RPGA judges have to be ready and capable to shift gears and handle these different play styles successfully. Not only that, they have to be ready to go between the various RPGA offerings, which, while they all use the D&D3.5 core rules, may have different ways to handling the "DM managed" aspects like level progression, access, allowable rules elements, and method of recording critical events.
The one argument that may or may not have been addressed is the campaign story question. First of all, I don't see how it is relevant for a playtest, or at least an initial playtest. Secondly, the questioning of the RPGA players in relation to a long campaign story makes the complete illogical and invalid assumption that RPGA players don't play long-running home campaigns, which many do. Thirdly, it makes the assumption that RPGA players are somehow disconnected from the over-arching stories of the various campaigns. Some of them may feel disconnected, but that is as much a limitation of their imaginations as it is the campaigns. Certainly when you have a campaign with 10,000+ players, the campaign cannot be personalized like an intimate home campaign can. But that doesn't mean the campaign ignores player involvement, nor does it mean that RPGA players are somehow incapable of engaging themselves in a playtest with an eye toward long-term storytelling.
Right now the RPGA has three active campaigns: Living Greyhawk, Xen'drik Expeditions, and Living Kingdoms of Kalamar. Within the past year, I have written multiple adventures for each one of them, and each of those adventures have been part of a series of adventures in a long-ranging story arc. I can say without a hint of hyperbole or exaggeration that multiple aspects of each of the adventures I've written in all of the campaigns were dictated by player involvement, both in terms of an aggregate (collecting data to see what MOST tables did) and in terms of personal interactions at tables I have run (when an individual player makes the story of the adventure so cool that I just have to include some details of it in the next adventure). Heck, some people whose names I don't even remember have contributed more to my adventures than anything else. So to say that RPGA players are less capable of playtesting because of some sort of deficiency in understanding how a good story-driven campaign is supposed to run is invalid on so many levels.
The assumption that a "real homebrew campaign" player/DM is closer to knowing and using the Core 3.5 rules is invalid, not just because it assumes that RPGA players are incapable of understanding the character progression paradigm as described in the DMG, but also because any given homebrew campaign may vary from the Core 3.5 rules as much, or more than, the RPGA.
So, to answer the question of the title of the thread: Yes, really. Tapping experienced and capable RPGA members who have proven themselves is probably a great way to kick off playtesting. That doesn't mean others can't or shouldn't, but I can't think of a better place to start.
Last edited:
sidonunspa
First Post
tzor said:
There is one reasion, RPGA players find the most cracked out rules combinations you will ever find.
Here is an example: Players Guide to Arcanis had 50 play-testers... they play-tested the rules for 3 months. Within 2 months in the RPGA environment players had found, enough broken combinations discovered that we had to start laying out errata.
You want to see the most cracked out character combinations? sit down at a high level Living Grayhawk table, your eyes will bleed.
Thats what you want for a playtester.. a person that will bend, twist, and rip the rules in half.
billd91
Not your screen monkey (he/him) 🇺🇦🇵🇸🏳️⚧️
Zander said:
This assumes that the rules for AoO, grappling, and turning undead are, in fact, overly complex AND that overcomplexity could have been discovered given the parameters of the playtesting. I don't have particular trouble with any of these rules. But given the years of experience with the system over thousands of gamers, I can understand that they could be designed better.
Are we supposed to blame the RPGA playtesters for not recognizing this? Or, more accurately, for those rules getting into the final published version of the game, since we actually have NO idea what the playtesters actually reported about the use of those rules thanks to NDAs.
billd91
Not your screen monkey (he/him) 🇺🇦🇵🇸🏳️⚧️
reanjr said:
RPGA events at conventions don't offer this. Nor do their home versions of their convention events. But how exactly is this supposed to affect what the RPGA does not does not offer to gamers in general? The RPGA is just an organization of gamers. It happens to also provide events for conventions but it's main reason for existance is as a network for gamers. How that becomes a barrier to story-based games is something I don't understand.
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