D&D 5E So what's next for D&D organized play?

[Warunsun]

Hopefully WotC learns from these mistakes and from the excellent job Paizo has done constantly promoting its Pathfinder program (likely because they actually sell their organized play adventures).

TSR and then Wizards (at first) used to sell their RPGA tournament adventures. They even charged for games that weren't based on D&D. Someone from WotC changed that later on.

 

[Feeroper]

That's a bit unfair. Realistically, LG was more than a bit insane for Wizards. They had practically no control over what any region did. Regions could create almost no experience at all, or they might create sub-rules for how PCs could own property, throw online in-character parties, and let player in-character posts on forums drive region-changing events. That might be okay, until you couple that with what many new players would say: I can't make heads or tails of how to get started in this campaign, there is so much lore I'll never measure up to other PCs, I as a player can't get invited to these special events or if I do I am told I am doing it wrong, my region's admins seem to make special exceptions for people they know, etc. Administratively, it was a trainwreck. The Circle couldn't keep up with the work each region produced, couldn't accurately learn from what each region did, and couldn't provide the necessary help many regions wanted. From a corporate perspective, there was no way the company could shape the program properly to reflect new product offerings... there was too long a chain of people and too great a delay in communications from one end to the other.

That's really the LG problem. Everything wonderful about it for one player (usually an established player) was bad for someone else (usually a new player or Wizards). It is absolutely necessary that any new campaign try to learn from LG, but also that they change the experience in various ways to improve upon it and lessen the inequity and other issues.

It isn't as if this is a free ride for Wizards. In 2001, the RPGA reported in Polyhedron that it had a budget exceeding $1 million, though they had requested almost twice that budget for 2001). They also shared that the RPGA had never been profitable. Every membership costs about $85 to fulfill. Costs have likely increased, and a recent job posting states the annual budget for all organized play (including Magic) is $6 million. Wizards has to be responsible with that cost and what it does for them, for the community, and for the hobby. There have been many years during which strong voices within Wizards (and TSR) argued for an end to organized play. I'm sure some of that continues. Monte Cook may or may not have been one of them, though his comments here are just one of many threads of thought you hear from time to time arguing against organized play. Another common complaint is that 'giving away' adventures is bad for business. I'm all for organized play being challenged, but in some years it seems internal politics can cloud the benefits rather than sharpen a company's focus.

Will we ever have another program like LG? Nope, and we shouldn't. But, we can hopefully harness much of that magic and add new great things, such that we can have another organized play program that tens to hundreds of thousands will treasure.

When it comes to "shutdown the RPGA Network", I think a lot of that was because the term "RPGA" had a really negative connotation among gamers not already a part of it. I've had several experiences where I was running an RPGA game and someone came up looking for D&D. When they realized it was an RPGA game they left. They wouldn't even give it a chance. I think that perception is starting to change, in part because the name was dropped and became a more generic "organized play", which other companies also offer.

Edit: I don't want to softball this. There are great heroes at Wizards who have kept organized play alive when it could have been ended. And, overall, there is strong support for it right now. But, there have also been huge missteps. One of them was how WotC dropped all promotion of LFR, including having functioning links from the main web site to where players could learn about LFR and order/download adventures. The promotion early on was great, but really disappeared right around the time play and interest dropped. Coincidence? Hard to say, but I believe it was a big factor in LFR's decline. Hopefully WotC learns from these mistakes and from the excellent job Paizo has done constantly promoting its Pathfinder program (likely because they actually sell their organized play adventures).

That's a lot of great insight into the world of organized play, thanks.

I felt with Encounters, WotC really simplified the organized play experience and let the community handle LFR after they stepped away from it. Encounters has been great though in that it doesn't fall victim to the issues that cropped up in LG, and at the same time was an attractive option for those curious about D&D or role playing in general who might not have ever given it a shot. Encounters has evolved over time, as it was really an introduction to D&D at the start, and now they are really testing out other ideas for public play I think. Since MiBG they have been much more similar to a home campaign, and the current season Scourge of the Sword Coast continues that. I think Encounters has been very good and speaking from my FLGS, it has brought in a lot of players over the time its been around. The beginning of every new season sees an influx of new people and our table numbers have grown. Its also a great option for those who don't have time for something like LFR or Pathfinder Society as the sessions are generally shorter ( 2 hours vs 4 hours) and you don't have to have as much time/resource invested as the slate is wiped clean every season. Lots of lapsed players have joined in via encounters as they don't have the time for a full home campaign & find that other organized play options a little too complex or dense to get into.

However, there definitely is a market for the LG or LFR type play as evidenced by PFS, and I think WotC will probably take a page from Paizo's book on that as it is run very well and efficiently by Paizo. The recent job listings they put out after Winter Fantasy reminded me of the Venture Captain/Venture lieutenant structure that Paizo has for PFS. I would really like to see a living campaign return for D&D, and would love to see some of those concepts from LG be resurrected as well, even in an adapted form to address the issues of the past and to set it apart from other living campaigns like PFS. I get the feeling there will be some major announcements regarding the future of organized play for D&D at or around Gen Con, and I think some of the ideas they are using in encounters right now may be a test bed not only for encounters, but possibly a future program as well (ie: the adventure app to determine the aggregate results of the campaign to shape the world).

 

[Thaumaturge]

Well, with GenCon event registration a month away, hopefully, they'll give us some kind of information soon.

Or maybe they think enough people will sign up for "Unnamed D&D Adventure 1" or whatever. But it certainly seems like pre-registration is a good time to announce a few more details about the Organized Play options.

Thaumaturge.

 

[Alphastream]

TSR and then Wizards (at first) used to sell their RPGA tournament adventures. They even charged for games that weren't based on D&D. Someone from WotC changed that later on.

That's a good point. The earliest adventures became printed modules (Against the Giants, Barrier Peaks, Slave Lords series, etc.). And they did at various times charge for the adventures. My feeling is that this was in line with the idea that you paid to play at a convention slot, as a way to cover costs. Charging for the download of scenarios was not likely done as a profit center, the way it feels like for Pathfinder. Though, I could be wrong there... does anyone know if the price of a PFS adventure is meant to actually cover the cost and be profitable, versus covering a bit of the costs of the organized play program? The D&D plan was certainly to cover a portion of costs. (I think one of the Polyhedron articles covered this, saying the per-scenario cost was still way below what they needed).

Interestingly, Encounters seasons are now being provided on DnDClassics, so maybe that's an attempt to cover costs or maybe it is an attempt to actually profit. It isn't clear to me, but with a price of millions, it may not be possible to actually profit. What do folks think, do you want Wizards to charge enough to profit from the organized play adventures? If so, what do you want in return, if anything, beyond what you receive today?

 

[smerwin29]

Important to remember, even for us old people: back in the day, there was no "download the adventure." The adventures had to be printed by TSR, put into an envelope, and mailed to the person who requested it. Charging a couple of bucks for the RPGA adventure probably did not even cover the cost of paper and postage.

 

[Alphastream]

Since MiBG they have been much more similar to a home campaign, and the current season Scourge of the Sword Coast continues that. I think Encounters has been very good and speaking from my FLGS, it has brought in a lot of players over the time its been around. The beginning of every new season sees an influx of new people and our table numbers have grown. Its also a great option for those who don't have time for something like LFR or Pathfinder Society as the sessions are generally shorter ( 2 hours vs 4 hours) and you don't have to have as much time/resource invested as the slate is wiped clean every season. Lots of lapsed players have joined in via encounters as they don't have the time for a full home campaign & find that other organized play options a little too complex or dense to get into.

However, there definitely is a market for the LG or LFR type play as evidenced by PFS, and I think WotC will probably take a page from Paizo's book on that as it is run very well and efficiently by Paizo. The recent job listings they put out after Winter Fantasy reminded me of the Venture Captain/Venture lieutenant structure that Paizo has for PFS.

I really like the emphasis on open storytelling in the new Encounters adventures, though I hear far too often that they are overwhelming for many DMs and for walk-up new players. There was a real beauty to the original Encounters concept, where a DM could run the week's encounter without previous preparation. They could also prepare ahead of time - I used to just read it once, then read it a second time and dream up a few adjustments or alternatives. It is far harder to do that today, and much harder to keep players interested if they are playing just to roll dice and relax. I don't want to see the MiBG format go away. Rather, I would like to see it be an option and for Encounters to be simpler in structure. Not quite the early 4E simplicity, but closer to that. I also worry that WotC may, as it often has, over-saturate that type of open play to the point people tire of it. Keeping types of play in moderation and offering a variety is usually better than solely promoting one type of play.

Gamers should rejoice that we have strong organized play efforts from a variety of companies. We can learn from Living Arcanis just how deep we can get on story and lore. We can find beautiful open play (even without combat) in Heroes of Rokugan. We can see how PFS took the LG organization of Triads and turned into the Venture structure. Several companies are taking a look at Encounters and figuring out how to apply it (and often doing so in interesting ways, such as the 13th Age organized play campaign). Unfortunately, the fans often know far more than the very busy staff at the gaming companies! It can take a while for good ideas to become incorporated into play. There is also far too little analysis of what worked and why. I bet if you asked four staff at any RPG company what works and what doesn't with their current organized play campaign you would get fairly different responses.

 

[Feeroper]

I also thought MiBG was a nice sort of upgrade from the open structure presented in Against the Cult of Chaos (in the form of a branching path type structure). At the time, that module was a pretty big deal in my opinion as it was the first time 1 table could be on completely different encounter than another. After Against the Cult of Chaos, it felt like a bit of a step back to go into the diamond staff season (however the Vault of the Dracolich gameday the preceded it was incredible if you had enough people participating), but MiBG marked the major transition into more of a hardcore D&D style of game.

Since then they have been experimenting more in that vein, and I think its been great, but I also think that they still have some more ground to tread to decide how they want their organized play games to proceed as Encounters is in a bit of a transition.