I totally agree with Piratecat. I'm a long-time Classics player and DM, and I've written some Classic adventures. (I still do, for
AnonyCon, but they're not RPGA-sanctioned anymore.) To me, the essential reason to have Classic adventures is to have character-driven games: games that are about PC1's relationship with PC2, and how that's affected by the big reveal in encounter 3 that changes how they view each other. Ideally, the characters have interesting interactions, the plot is based on things that are important to the characters, and the whole thing comes together like a really good stretch of a home campaign or like a good adventure movie or book (but with the flexibility of role-play.)
I agree that competitive play was an important part of the old Classics--not vital, but it added to them. But I don't think the style of competitive play (team tournaments, in effect) the OP is describing is the right one to focus on. In fact, that's precisely the sort of achievement based, "solve the game" style of play that Living games do better.
My recipe for bringing back Classics is different. I agree that quality of games is key, although that's always challenging; any plan based on "we'll do the same as what we used to do, but do it better!" is hard unless you have a clear idea of HOW to do it better. But I think the approach should be:
1) Commit to games that are character-driven. The last few Classics were the same as Living games, but with pre-supplied character sheets that were nothing more than the mechanical characters. What's the point in that? Everything that can do, Living can do better.
2) Make a commitment to serving the market consistently, but not necessarily with a huge total number of games. Something like 20 rounds/year is probably enough.
3) Use volunteers (or conceivably people paid at a low rate as freelancers) for the editing/approval process to reduce the need to worry about staff resources. I think the OP is totally right about this one. Classics can be popular again, but it will never compete with Living games in terms of size. So the model has to be one where we're happy with games being played a total of 50 or 100 tables, over their entire life; if the model is "can it match LG in size", it's going to fail.
4) Allow cons to do some of the legwork for developing the modules. Back in the day, people would often write modules because they were recruited to do so by con organizers. If the module was approved, the con would get to premiere it first. That was a powerful way to get more games written; I'm more likely to write a game to help out the con run by my friends than I am to help out the abstraction of the RPGA as a whole.
a) Maybe a regional model should be used here, but not like the regions in LG. What I'm thinking is having regional editors who can approve modules for use at local cons; the best of the regional modules then get approved for world-wide release. This would allow A) a higher number of modules available in any one region than if there were only the world-wide modules, B) everyone to play the best games, and C) competition to make your module as good as possible so it could percolate up. The key question is whether it would be worth the overhead; do you gain enough by having additional people involved, approving and editing at the regional level? Not sure, but I think so.
5) Bring back some forms of individually competitive play. At the most basic level, that means bringing back multi-round, individual advancement tournaments like the old Feature at GenCon. You could also have invitational events that require having won a previous event to play. Ideally, multi-round tournaments are written so each round stands on its own but combines to tell a bigger story, so the three round feature at GenCon can be run as three events of D&D classics at a smaller con that can't support an advancement-style tournament. (This is something of a challenge, because part of the appeal of multi-round tournaments is telling a bigger, longer story, which makes it harder to make each round stand alone. But it can be done-- I know because I've written games this way.)
a) The old Masters/Grandmasters/Paragon structure was also a nice carrot, but it may involve too much overhead. Also, it seriously favored heavy play versus performance, which meant that over time the play quality in the Masters level was declining. A model more like the bridge scoring system, which includes total points earned but also requires "special points" that can only be won by winning special tournaments to advance would probably be better. Again, this may be more effort than its worth. Frankly, good Classics even without any competitive aspect would get me actively attending cons, and multi-round tournaments at the big cons would rock.
Anyway, those are my thoughts on the subject. I'm curious as to whether others think my approach would work, because I've been thinking about putting together an editorial team and offering it to Ian Richards.
Honestly, I'd like to see something like this succeed, because I see the RPGA getting narrower and narrower in focus, and excluding more and more players as a result.
