The RPGA and Living Games in General
Hey.
I'm not the most qualified to speak on this topic, but one of my players last night was telling me about "this new thing, Living Forgotten Realms," so I thought I should post a thread with my impressions of that aspect of the hobby.
Personally I only played Living Greyhawk for about three years. Oh, and I played some Living Arcanis. I know people who've played Living City, the Star Wars one, etc. etc. and have basically played some type of this game for the last ten years. So there's a lot more experience out there, and if we can get them to come in and post their impressions / agreements / disagreements we'll give a better picture.
What is a "Living" Game?
You, and tens of thousands around the world, are playing in the same campaign. You have a constant character (or characters) and get to play that character in a number of games. As that character advances, events occur in the campaign world. Sometimes you get to participate in these events.
What does the RPGA, and Wizards, have to do with it?
The RPGA is a volunteer organization, and the campaign leadership in your area is made up of volunteers working for the RPGA campaign coordinator. All the people who write campaign documents, which includes background stuff, adventures, and so on, have to submit their work to regional leadership, who edit them and decide whether to certify them as official writ. GMs are technically working for the RPGA as well, although people tend to 'take turns' running games in a Living campaign. Players need an RPGA number, and produce it at the table when the table record is taken (if this is your first game, they'll give you an RPGA number). Participation in the RPGA can garner you fabulous prizes, such as permission to play a weird race, a card you can use once a game to do something nifty, and so on.
RPGA coordinators arrange official games at conventions, and moderate Yahoo groups that give out announcements about the campaign. Also Yahoo groups that talk about D&D rules and how they apply to the campaign.
What about Living Forgotten Realms?
This is a new campaign. Your chance to get in on the ground floor, basically - most other people will have characters ranging from 1-4th level. Obviously it is set in Forgotten Realms. I'm not going to bother to look this up right now, but if you look for the Yahoo groups or the info on Wizards site, you can get plenty of information about how they're running this campaign and where in your area you can find people to play with.
I know LF is doing things a bit differently than they did with Greyhawk - for one thing, you can play in a game you ran for other people - but I'm not entirely up on all the details, because I'm trying to stay out of it.
Why do Folks Play These Games?
This is a chance to see a character advance, assuming your character lives; a chance to play a LOT of D&D, limited only by your capacity to travel to out-of-state conventions; a chance to play with your friends, if you can get a group together (more about that in a bit). On the other hand...
What is the Downside - Why don't You Play Anymore?
In my opinion, Living Games are the junk food of tabletop. You know they're out there, and generally they offer a mediocre experience. This can be offset by having a good group to play with, or a good DM, or even both - but those are just as likely as a bad group or a bad DM. To get a lot out of Living Games, you have to devote a lot of time to getting your friends to play with you, organizing trips to conventions (so you can play as many games as possible, and get the best loot for your character), checking up on the best builds for your character, and so on.
Well, for an achiever like me anyway - your tastes may vary. If you don't mind always being the weakest one at the table, and sometimes having your group be stymied by the challenge of an adventure, go ahead and walk into Living Games and play with a random group of people. Personally I've always felt left behind.
Let me give an example. A good friend of mine I used to play Living Greyhawk with went to Gencon with four friends and played Living Forgotten Realms (LF) literally all weekend. They got their characters up to 4th level. Basically all they did at the con was play D&D in 4-5 hour blocks of time. (They also played in the D&D Open and did pretty well.)
These guys arrange to go to cons together months in advance, practice strategy, talk about character builds, and so on. More corrupt groups (not my friend) run games for each other so they can get the best loot out of them. They even get involved in the leadership and write stuff designed for their friends.
How does that hurt your game, if you don't have an organized group? Well remember these adventure modules are written for everyone - there's no DM option to make things tougher or easier depending on how organized the group is. As a campaign goes on, some writers tend to make modules more difficult because of groups like my friend's. I've literally gone to conventions with my friend and played one of the official "Premieres" (a game first run at that con, how it goes affects the campaign as a whole), and his group walked through the game and finished early while my pick-up group got stymied on the second encounter and failed or ran out of time. This is not due to poor DMing - DMs are encouraged to think of themselves as judges and enforce the rules rather than try to just let the players have fun. Anyway my point is the campaigns tend to be affected, controlled, influenced, by the experiences of small and vocal minorities like my friend's group. They're the ones that are most active on the Yahoo group, they help organize smaller cons, judge when necessary, these guys keep the game together. If you're not in a good group, you can still be active - you just can't have the best stuff in the game.
I've seen a lot of quality writing, DMing, roleplaying, and so on go on at Living Games. The problem for me has been that I didn't have three or four friends I wanted to travel with and play these games. Again, your tastes may vary - and the RPGA has made noises about allowing official games to go on the official D&D virtual tabletop when that comes up. So I may be singing a different tune a year from now, if I can run these games for you guys online.
Obviously I'm working to wean myself from an experience that ultimately I found somewhat negative. You guys have the opportunity to post below with your impressions of these games, either positive or negative.
As I said earlier, there are a lot of features that make Living Games fun. For myself, as an achiever, I find the experience somewhat addictive - I'd be happy to waste my entire time at a convention getting a character up a level and another thousand gold worth of items. But at the end of the day, I don't feel as satisfied as I would after a great home game - I pick up my toys and go home, knowing what I've accomplished is on my character sheet and nowhere else.
Garth Marenghi wrote:
I'm one of the few people you'll meet who've written more books than they've read.
I played in my first Living ______ at GenCon just a few weeks ago. It was Living Forgotten Realms, and the module was Core 1-3 Sense of Wonder.
I should note that I am not a big tabletop RPG player - I played AD&D 2nd Edition 10-15 years ago, some Shadowrun, Cyberpunk, and GURPS, but pretty much dropped the hobby during high school and hadn't touched it since then.
4th Edition caught my eye though, and I was pretty interested to check it out while at GenCon. We had tickets to an event fall into our laps which seemed like providence, so myself and the two friends I was with rolled up characters to play.
The short verdict is that we had a pretty good time, but I don't think the Living Forgotten Realms thing is really suited for any of us. I'll explain my reasoning below.
The idea of playing 4E at GenCon was pretty appealing precisely because we were getting in almost on the ground floor. We knew we would be newbs, but we figured that since the game hadn't been out long, our transgressions would not be so grievous or so uncommon. Sure it was new to us, but it was new to everyone else as well.
We were pretty much wrong on that front. Like KingMob said, the D&D ballroom (which was huge, the second biggest area after the exhibition hall I believe) was full of the hardcore.
Our Table
Our table had 6 people plus a DM. Guy #1 was about as hardcore a D&D player as I can imagine. He had a tackle box full of dice and miniatures, and when it was time for everyone to produce a mini of their character (we had no idea it would be required, it certainly never was in any of my games from way back when) he was Johnny-on-the-spot and lent us all miniatures. But boy did we get glares and stares of disbelief from the rest of the table (including the DM).
Transgression #2 - We had ~1 set of dice between the three of us. Uh oh. We were really calling ourselves out as newbs at this point, despite the fact that we'd already offered that we hadn't played in a while.
Transgression #3 - We didn't have RPGA numbers. The DM actually glared daggers at me over this one. I vaguely knew about them, and the reasons behind them (ongoing campaign where you can transfer your character around) but this was our first event - they were not handing out numbers at the door when you walked in. I ran over to the setup area where some WotC employees were stationed to answer questions and got a few RPGA cards. When I got back to the table the DM gave me the look of death - apparently he had just gone and gotten some spare cards for us as well. Trying to take care of it myself had just earned me some negative karma apparently.
At this point we (my friends and I) were just about ready to leave. The game hadn't even started yet and we'd gotten more than our fill of dirty looks. There was a large crowd of people on a waiting list to get into any game - they were being turned away by the bucketfull. We probably could have sold our seats for a tidy profit, and we were definitely tempted at that point. After the night was over the three of us all had a laugh over that moment - we were each thinking about "having to go to the bathroom" and just not coming back. The DM however, apparently just needed some mountain dew to pick up his spirits. He warmed up quite a bit over the adventure and didn't give us the death stare at all after that - he let his dice handle it.
The Husband and Wife Duo
I already mentioned player #1, with the tacklebox. I would see him in and around the D&D area throughout the weekend. He told us, somewhat proudly, that he was signed up to play pretty much nothing but D&D for the weekend. He was a pro and this was his championship weekend - we were tourists, there to see the sights.
The other people at our table were a couple. The Husband repeatedly told us about how he was a DM at home, which apparently meant he was super-knowledgable. Or so he kept telling us. Wifey was an amateur actress, except she chose to roleplay a goodie-two-shoes whose decisions were essentially made for her in advance. They were the yin to our yang - we were there to check out the new rules, learn how to play, and wing it. This was another weekend of D&D for them, except they didn't have to run the adventure themselves this time.
The Adventure
I'll give the short version, because I don't want to ruin for anyone who might play the adventure.
It's essentially broken down into a few parts - the setup, encounters, and skill challenges.
We breezed through the first fight - which it retrospect probably set us up for failure later. We then got bogged down tremendously setting up the skill challenge, as there was no cohesion in the group. Wifey had few good suggestions but wanted to talk often. The hardcore solo guy was straight to the point - he wanted us to progress and get to the next fight, where he was obviously built to dominate. We floundered for a while with the skill challenge, but eventually prevailed.
The second fight was our undoing. When we finally got to our destination, my character (a rogue) was sent to scout ahead. A level 1 rogue, no matter how sneaky he is, just isn't that sneaky. I was forced to roll a stealth check every two steps, otherwise I'd take a large (-5) penalty to each roll for moving too quickly. It was obvious that if I was going to be forced to roll the dice ten times just to get down one corridor, I was very quickly going to make a bad roll and tip off a sentry.
I slipped back outside to report this to the group so we could decide how to proceed.
The Husband (playing a paladin) took the decision out of my hands, and decided to become the living embodiment of Leeroy Jenkins. He marched right through the entrance and into a room full of creatures - we weren't sure if they were hostile or not at that point. He planted himself there and pretty much said "Okay, I'm here, do your worst." Unfortunately, the DM took him at his word. We were quickly surrounded, overwhelmed, and outnumbered by enemies that were far stronger than us and far, far stronger that what we'd faced in the first encounter. We were also completely strung out, because The Husband was alone in the room while the rest of us were still at the entrance.
It was like watching a raid wipe happen -- in super slow motion. If it had been an MMO, we would have simply wiped, rezzed, yelled a bit, and tried again without the boneheaded tactics. But it's D&D, you can't just wipe and try again, so we had to play out the entire agonizing combat and an incredibly severe disadvantage. Predictably, it did not go well, nor did it go quickly. We didn't actually wipe - we just ran out of time. It was clear that we were not winning, nor were we likely to win the fight if we had continued.
That ended our adventure. For us, it was the end of D&D for the weekend. For the others it was just an abortion and something to forget as they moved on to their next event. You could see the difference in attitudes at the end. They stuck around to scavenge and collect the meager loot and experience we'd earned to give their characters that little boost. We got up to go, and left.
It showed me a few things about the Living Forgotten Realms campaign. Number one, the balance was off. There was no ramp up between the first encounter and the second. The second fight might have been winnable if we hadn't set ourselves up for failure, but it was clearly either: not playtested for balance, or designed for people far more optimized and hardcore than we were.
Second, it wasn't our crowd. As I said, we were tourists. It was like jumping onto a cruise ship full of senior citizens when we were looking for the party boat. That's not a knock on the cruise industry, we just out of place.
Still, I'd have a hard time recommending it to anyone thinking of casually showing up to join in a living forgotten realms campaign, particularly in light of KingMob's comments. It's only going to get more regimented and hardcore as more modules come out and more people power their way through it for loot. I'd try again, but only with a table full of friends. And yeah, I'll be sure to have my own dice and maybe a mini of my own ready in advance. But we'd absolutely be tourists again, looking for a fun vacation - not living there week to week so I can transfer my loot.
If you are thinking about trying one out, just know that the table you sit down at and the players and DM you end up with is a crapshoot, and their motivation for being there may not be the same as yours.
Xbox Live/PSN: Scaphism
A good, well-motivated DM can make a difference. But a con is not really the best place to get started with a Living Campaign. Best is to have a group of friends that are motivated to make characters and play together. But you can always have a bum game, DM, or just a few bad rolls that make the game turn from a 4 hour walk to a 5.5 hour agony.
Garth Marenghi wrote:
It's amazing how much difference a good DM can make, not to mention players who are there to enjoy themselves as a collective (including the DM).
I don't know much about Living (anything). Are they forced to play all events "as is" with no flexibility given to the DM? I'd hate that, personally. For me, the fun comes in the ability to mold and adjust encounters, as well as the weave of the tale, around the participants. I wouldn't enjoy playing out an encounter that was so clearly out of scale.
I might have overstated the things that went wrong in my experience. There certainly were a bunch of them, but we ended up enjoying ourselves anyways.
In all I'd say the DM was pretty good. He definitely did loosen up after getting a bit of caffeine in him and he was very good about letting us engage and lead the story, rather than bulldozing along. And when we started to spin off into unproductive tangents, he reeled us back in.
I also think his hands were tied with regard to the difficulty of the module. From my understanding that's a requirement of the official events and the living campaign. You could tell he knew we were about to get creamed, but he played the hand he was dealt. He tried to help us out a bit by lending us ability cards that you can use to give an ally a minor benefit - e.g. add one to a skill check or attack roll, one use before it's gone. It didn't matter in the end as we still lost badly, but the gesture was appreciated.
When you sit down at a table with a bunch of strangers it's a crapshoot. You know that going in, but you also hope that you serendipitously end up with an awesome table full of random people.
Xbox Live/PSN: Scaphism
Yes.
I used to run Living Greyhawk games on a regular basis, and they really frown on reducing the game's difficulty. The idea is that everyone plays the same module.
I think they ought to set up a Living Campaign with difficulty settings, so people could get better loot (or cooler character options) if they wanted to pick a higher difficulty, but could get okay stuff and get through the module on an easier difficulty.
They had that in LG as APR settings, but they were only available if you had a character level range between two settings. For example a game would have a "level 6" and a "level 8" stat block for each encounter, and if the party character levels were between the two they could choose which they wanted to go with.
In my ideal Living campaign, every game would have difficulty settings you could set - or even change in midstream. Of course then you'd have to write every encounter / stat block twice or three times, which adds a lot of work on the front end...
Garth Marenghi wrote:
On the bright side, I am finding that adjusting encounters to suit the group composition to be pretty darn easy in 4E.
Good to know that it's not all bad out there
In fairness to the DM, there's not exactly much you can do with a scene like that unless you want to bend over backwards to save the character. ;> Campaigns I play in, the usual solution is the paladin finds himself alone in the dark surrounded by stuff going "Guys, let's get them! Guys? ... Guys?" while everybody else leaves in order to figure out a new strategy for taking on a fully prepared enemy with one less liabilit... er... one less ally.
— ♨♪+
Agreed, Hypatian. Of course, if Scaph is accurate in his assessment of the encounter (10-11 non-minion enemies of level 4 or 5 to the 6 PCs of 1st level), I don't think any strategy would see that encounter result in a positive outcome (short of some unusual caveat that skews the results).
We took down a few of the non-commander enemies and they had just over 40HP. We obviously didn't get to attack everything, but from what we saw they were identical enemies. We had 2 clerics and a paladin, and 5 of the six were dwarves (with second wind as a minor action) and we still ran out of healing surges very quickly. We also had no idea how big the jump in difficulty was between the first encounter (trivial) and the second (overwhelming).
I don't want to give too much away in case you play the module yourself, so spoilers below.
Xbox Live/PSN: Scaphism
I kind of figured that it was a "doing the smart thing will result in a reasonably easy fight", "doing the average thing will result in a hard but winnable fight", and most importantly "if you do the stupid thing, God help you" kind of situation.
If you set up a scenario to be challenging to people who act reasonably, and play expecting reasonable behavior, a single "spoiler" can really screw things up. You basically have your choice of "Okay, let's forget that ever happened" (and pray the player in question doesn't say "No, no! Really, I want to do it!") or having the enemies act in a reasonable way (i.e. mulch Our Heroes and throw them on the compost pile.)
Thinking fondly of "stupid moments" in games I've played in... The (secretly) evil character who tortured some dwarven city guards (NOTE: not to death, not wearing a mask, etc.) in the middle of the local dwarf population's capital city. While our party was being employed by the local secret police.
That wasn't the most stupid part. The most stupid part was that he (the player) was surprised that after he told us about this, our lawful neutral half-orc monk sat on him while our lawful good halfling monk went to get the city guards. *blink* Apparently, he though we should have some party solidarity thing going with him that would make up for his willfully evil (and more significantly: chaotic stupid) acts. If he'd done something evil and then talked it up as being actually not that bad, that would be one thing. But doing something guaranteed to get us all clapped in irons (if not torn limb from limb by an outraged dwarven mob)?
Even if he was a freaking paladin and the local dwarven guards were minions of the Overfiend, we would have washed our hands of him.
ANYway, whee. I do think that the RPGA type stuff is perhaps a little strict in how it's done. I can understand why, though. And I must admit, I've never played in an organized game like that. It might be kind of fun.
— ♨♪+
I've heard so many con game stories that the thought of going to a con to play in an RPG kind of makes my skin crawl.
Have I gamed with strangers? Yes. Have I had good games with strangers? Yes! But they weren't this kind of rigid-org rules pre-made module games either.
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Well, the impression I've always gotten with RPGA stuff is that it provides a way that you can have *some* possibility of consistency of play when you play with folks at a big convention, as well as smaller scenes around local game shops. No idea if reality bears that out, though. The optimal solution is a game of all friends with a very good DM, but we can't all have that. (My DM has been "retired" from DMing for a while, sadly.
I hope to be able to play 4E one of these days, though.)
I suspect that DM quality still matters a whole lot, but... eh. When I end up swapping D&D stories with some random person, they start telling me about their half-Cambion half-dragon elf with one level each in about ten different prestige classes, and I just smile and nod. (3E there, of course.) Rigid rules with unknown players at least mean you're going to know going into it that something's going to be reining in that sort of folks.
— ♨♪+
Thread Necromancy!
As the players in my weekly (but not during this December) Scales of War game know, I'm getting ready to go out to Fort Wayne at the end of the month to participate in DDXP, where I will be running and playing a lot of Living Forgotten Realms (LFR).
First to clear up a few (understandable) misconceptions earlier in this thread: LFR's main rule is make it fun. While there are limits on what a DM can change in a given adventure, the limits are pretty minimal - hit the plot points, don't add new types of enemies, make it fun. As long as the adventure is fun for the players, and two players from different tables both did thing X, Y and Z, fighting monsters A, B and C, then all is good. The DM and the players are expected to play wholly within the rules as they are written, so a DM can't say that in this adventure, falling does 3d4 damage per 10' (the rules have it at 1d10 for 10'). Also, as a Living campaign, all characters have to start at level 1 and earn XP and treasure in LFR games. Each adventure has a Low and a High version, so it can more easily suit a 4 level block, but the players can choose either option, regardless of their level.
With all of that said, is there anyone else here who will be in Fort Wayne for the DDXP convention? I have a hotel room booked, and realized that I booked a double room, so there should be another open bed in the room that is going unused. If no one is going, does anyone live in the area and want to try to hang out at some point?
Steam: Atras
XBox Live: Atras
When you are there, look for Dustin Snyder (he will be one of the head judges for LFR), and tell him that mudbunny says hello.
Xbox | Steam | Google +
Coldforged: This is merely conjecture, but I'd hazard that a bareboobed alien with a toothcooter is almost certainly NSFW.
Oh man! I bet he wrote a scathing blog post about you on the twitters and facebooks =P
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Steam: Atras
XBox Live: Atras
Yup. We work quite closely together on the WotC boards. He is quite knowledgeable on the RPGA.
Xbox | Steam | Google +
Coldforged: This is merely conjecture, but I'd hazard that a bareboobed alien with a toothcooter is almost certainly NSFW.