How To Not Organize Your RPG Community
Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2012 12:50 am
So as it turns out I've been frequenting a monthly board gaming community for a couple of years now.
Being a keen RPG gamer I have for much of that time offered to run various RPGs, primarily Paranoia which is one of the best ones in my repertoire for relatively short one off games.
There has been minimal interest. The community is largely board gamers, infrequently war gamers, and they either don't play RPGs, or don't want to at this monthly event which is not especially well suited to it. It is better to just play three or more full board games than spend the entire time committed to playing one part of an RPG that probably won't continue in any meaningful sense, and would eat up many or all of your foreseeable monthly board game events anyway.
Then a group of kids started turning up and playing 4E. This is all fine and good. But they are well, kids, really kids, really young kids, so you don't want to play with them.
Now since they are such young kids one of their dads runs the game for them. He is a huge 4E fan. After about a year the kids figure out how to run the game themselves (and consequently seem to become more organized and enjoy it more, and run for longer sessions and everything, good for you kids, but, hm, mildly worrying hints of the dad's GMing talent there).
So dad GM is now on the prowl for more RPGs. For I dunno, six months to a year we had the whole 4E bait and switch thing going on. He appointed himself defacto head of all RPG gaming at the club (How? He GMed 4E games for 11 year olds he shipped in himself. It's all the authority he needs.)
He rounds up anyone who might look sideways at an RPG onto his secret RPG emailing list and actually tries to suppress organized public discussion of organizing RPGs on the gaming group's forums.
Any hint of any information we have always indicates by far d20 era 3.x games are what people want to play, but automagically on any given day that the event is on he substitutes in a 4E game and says "oh well it's 4Es turn to be run this month..." and then it burns and fails and nothing gets anywhere.
This much I've shaken my fist into the darkness about around here before.
By chance recently some new RPG players have migrated into the community, a couple of older fellows and some less young kids. They are keen to play, well, 3.x edition games.
Unfortunately they bring with them a, hm, semi competent Pathfinder GM, and the 4E dad GM likes him more than me (because I suspect of my disagreements with him over his bait and switch community take over bullshit). So a... grindingly slow game of Pathfinder has been going on for maybe 3-5 sessions? Never the full length of event because pathfinder GM always leaves remarkably early and takes a couple of the older kid players with him.
I generally chose not to bother with joining the pathfinder group, until recently when the board gamers saw sudden large drop in population and it was basically that or nothing for a couple of events running.
Though I DID manage to round up some of the older kids and some random passers by and run Paranoia at one event thanks to the increase in the RPG community size and due to pathfinder GM and dad GM being sufficiently disorganized that some months their players are left twiddling their fingers with nothing to do.
My little Paranoia game was arguably the most successful RPG game session ever run at the event. Characters were made a full adventure packed with actual things actually happening was played through. This is a big deal because seriously pathfinder GM requires like a WHOLE EVENT to make characters and runs approximately 1 to 1/2 of what should be a brief low character count combat encounter per event.
It was also insanely successful in declared player satisfaction, and very importantly in drawing positive attention from board gamers. I actively had people coming up to me afterwards saying "I over heard your paranoia game, I only play board games these days, but that actually sounded like a real lot of fun!". Which is you know. Sorta what you want to grow the community.
Despite that Dad GM is still running the show and actively trying to hedge out any possibility of me running any RPG ever.
And his latest plan, formulated with the er, assistance?, of the pathfinder GM is a REAL doozy. And it's the main thing I'm writing this post up to complain about.
So this is the main meat of this post is here...
So leveraging their authority of basically between them being the fathers or legal guardians or car rides or something of half the role playing gamers forming this tiny community they have decided the following...
They want to run more games and attract more players (OK, good thing)
They want to run a wider variety of games since running nothing but 4E and then (a bit past the fad unfortunately) a bit of Pathfinder didn't work. (OK good thing)
They decide the top games on their lists are...
d20 Modern run by a kid (the kid isn't that bad... or that good... and it's god damn d20 modern damnit)
pathfinder run by sloooow play
the 5E playtest, because dad GM didn't have enough of crushing failures at attracting or keeping players when he ran(edit: sat there wanking over) every brand new 4E promotional product ever.
Well if you have any problems with this then you can just run something yourself then! because you see having predated dad GM, run the only RPG event to successfully attract outside interest that this community has ever seen, hell the only RPG one off event to even RUN A COMPLETE ADVENTURE AS AN EVENT, and having spent the entire time he was formulating his list of priorities saying "and I can totally run a 3.x game like everyone on the list is saying they want to play" puts you as a last minute "Well I didn't even consider it but if you aren't happy with that smorgus board of awesome options I guess you can try and take the one remaining regular RPG player who isn't under our direct or indirect parental authority and do that!"
But here is the SUPER AMAZING KICKER, the GOLDEN CHESTNUT of their plan, the TRUMP CARD that will increase the RPG community and bring them the extra players they need to actually run three games at once (which I will note, they didn't ACTUALLY have at the time of making these plans).
The Month of Character Generation!
They fully expect and have basically instructed all their RPG players and everyone on dad GMs secret mailing list to attend next months event and...
DO NOTHING BUT GENERATE MULTIPLE CHARACTERS.
The plan is that then everyone will have a character for every game type they want to run and they don't then have to spend 1 entire session making characters each time they run a new game type! (Because, again, these guys take that long, and yes, again, I ran a group here through character creation and a full adventure with an RPG no problem, and yes Paranoia is sorta simpler in some respects, but also not really any less complex than say, 1st-3rd level or even higher 3.x characters).
Yes the actual plan they have to get more people playing more RPGs is to get everyone they currently have and actively NOT PLAY RPGS with them.
Also their plan is that this will also solve player resistance to using premade characters for their events (which has ODDLY arisen since for instance the pathfinder GM provided his group with a bunch of "premade" 9th level characters almost all of which were HORRENDOUSLY multi-classed (wizard 6 Cleric 3 was like the BEST one) and which don't seem to get actual items despite having all the rest of their choices (badly) made for them. WHY will this solve player resistance to premade characters? Because they will have premade their own, not sensibly at home during down time or something, but during the only face to face play time this dumb ass community has.
But what about all these new players this BRILLIANT strategy attracts? After being drawn in during character generation month when they say "ooh whats this can I play?" and being answered with "Play? We aren't playing! ahahahahaha, noob!". Well see then when they decide to join they can be given a SPARE character one of the regulars generated! And that's totally different to a premade character made by some random GM... because it's a premade character made by some random GM or a random player!
Of course one of the keystones of this strategy is that basically everyone is expected to invest time in making characters for game options they don't actually want to play and dad GM despite not even having 4E D&D on his list of supposed priority games to play has it on basically number one on his list of characters he expects the players to spend an entire monthly meet generating.
Basically even now the whole fucking "this month we make characters" bullshit is also STILL a bait and switch enterprise where dad GM attempts to sate the community interest in 3.x games by letting them make characters, vainly hopes forcing them to them make 4E characters will draw them in to the dark side, and plans in the near future to say "well this months turn is 4E (like it is every fucking month) and how can you protest, I mean you voluntarily made characters for this 4E game that month I arm wrestled all the kids into doing that!"
Now MY alternative strategy that I presented was if you want diversity in games as they claim, and want to see more people playing (and actually enjoying themselves). Just play a fucking game. Get through the character creation fast, get into the meat of the game and run a complete or at least eventful and well paced adventure in one fucking sitting. And if they repeatedly can't fucking do that for shit then step the fuck aside and watch someone who actually has those MINIMUM abilities of a successful GM do so.
Being a keen RPG gamer I have for much of that time offered to run various RPGs, primarily Paranoia which is one of the best ones in my repertoire for relatively short one off games.
There has been minimal interest. The community is largely board gamers, infrequently war gamers, and they either don't play RPGs, or don't want to at this monthly event which is not especially well suited to it. It is better to just play three or more full board games than spend the entire time committed to playing one part of an RPG that probably won't continue in any meaningful sense, and would eat up many or all of your foreseeable monthly board game events anyway.
Then a group of kids started turning up and playing 4E. This is all fine and good. But they are well, kids, really kids, really young kids, so you don't want to play with them.
Now since they are such young kids one of their dads runs the game for them. He is a huge 4E fan. After about a year the kids figure out how to run the game themselves (and consequently seem to become more organized and enjoy it more, and run for longer sessions and everything, good for you kids, but, hm, mildly worrying hints of the dad's GMing talent there).
So dad GM is now on the prowl for more RPGs. For I dunno, six months to a year we had the whole 4E bait and switch thing going on. He appointed himself defacto head of all RPG gaming at the club (How? He GMed 4E games for 11 year olds he shipped in himself. It's all the authority he needs.)
He rounds up anyone who might look sideways at an RPG onto his secret RPG emailing list and actually tries to suppress organized public discussion of organizing RPGs on the gaming group's forums.
Any hint of any information we have always indicates by far d20 era 3.x games are what people want to play, but automagically on any given day that the event is on he substitutes in a 4E game and says "oh well it's 4Es turn to be run this month..." and then it burns and fails and nothing gets anywhere.
This much I've shaken my fist into the darkness about around here before.
By chance recently some new RPG players have migrated into the community, a couple of older fellows and some less young kids. They are keen to play, well, 3.x edition games.
Unfortunately they bring with them a, hm, semi competent Pathfinder GM, and the 4E dad GM likes him more than me (because I suspect of my disagreements with him over his bait and switch community take over bullshit). So a... grindingly slow game of Pathfinder has been going on for maybe 3-5 sessions? Never the full length of event because pathfinder GM always leaves remarkably early and takes a couple of the older kid players with him.
I generally chose not to bother with joining the pathfinder group, until recently when the board gamers saw sudden large drop in population and it was basically that or nothing for a couple of events running.
Though I DID manage to round up some of the older kids and some random passers by and run Paranoia at one event thanks to the increase in the RPG community size and due to pathfinder GM and dad GM being sufficiently disorganized that some months their players are left twiddling their fingers with nothing to do.
My little Paranoia game was arguably the most successful RPG game session ever run at the event. Characters were made a full adventure packed with actual things actually happening was played through. This is a big deal because seriously pathfinder GM requires like a WHOLE EVENT to make characters and runs approximately 1 to 1/2 of what should be a brief low character count combat encounter per event.
It was also insanely successful in declared player satisfaction, and very importantly in drawing positive attention from board gamers. I actively had people coming up to me afterwards saying "I over heard your paranoia game, I only play board games these days, but that actually sounded like a real lot of fun!". Which is you know. Sorta what you want to grow the community.
Despite that Dad GM is still running the show and actively trying to hedge out any possibility of me running any RPG ever.
And his latest plan, formulated with the er, assistance?, of the pathfinder GM is a REAL doozy. And it's the main thing I'm writing this post up to complain about.
So this is the main meat of this post is here...
So leveraging their authority of basically between them being the fathers or legal guardians or car rides or something of half the role playing gamers forming this tiny community they have decided the following...
They want to run more games and attract more players (OK, good thing)
They want to run a wider variety of games since running nothing but 4E and then (a bit past the fad unfortunately) a bit of Pathfinder didn't work. (OK good thing)
They decide the top games on their lists are...
d20 Modern run by a kid (the kid isn't that bad... or that good... and it's god damn d20 modern damnit)
pathfinder run by sloooow play
the 5E playtest, because dad GM didn't have enough of crushing failures at attracting or keeping players when he ran(edit: sat there wanking over) every brand new 4E promotional product ever.
Well if you have any problems with this then you can just run something yourself then! because you see having predated dad GM, run the only RPG event to successfully attract outside interest that this community has ever seen, hell the only RPG one off event to even RUN A COMPLETE ADVENTURE AS AN EVENT, and having spent the entire time he was formulating his list of priorities saying "and I can totally run a 3.x game like everyone on the list is saying they want to play" puts you as a last minute "Well I didn't even consider it but if you aren't happy with that smorgus board of awesome options I guess you can try and take the one remaining regular RPG player who isn't under our direct or indirect parental authority and do that!"
But here is the SUPER AMAZING KICKER, the GOLDEN CHESTNUT of their plan, the TRUMP CARD that will increase the RPG community and bring them the extra players they need to actually run three games at once (which I will note, they didn't ACTUALLY have at the time of making these plans).
The Month of Character Generation!
They fully expect and have basically instructed all their RPG players and everyone on dad GMs secret mailing list to attend next months event and...
DO NOTHING BUT GENERATE MULTIPLE CHARACTERS.
The plan is that then everyone will have a character for every game type they want to run and they don't then have to spend 1 entire session making characters each time they run a new game type! (Because, again, these guys take that long, and yes, again, I ran a group here through character creation and a full adventure with an RPG no problem, and yes Paranoia is sorta simpler in some respects, but also not really any less complex than say, 1st-3rd level or even higher 3.x characters).
Yes the actual plan they have to get more people playing more RPGs is to get everyone they currently have and actively NOT PLAY RPGS with them.
Also their plan is that this will also solve player resistance to using premade characters for their events (which has ODDLY arisen since for instance the pathfinder GM provided his group with a bunch of "premade" 9th level characters almost all of which were HORRENDOUSLY multi-classed (wizard 6 Cleric 3 was like the BEST one) and which don't seem to get actual items despite having all the rest of their choices (badly) made for them. WHY will this solve player resistance to premade characters? Because they will have premade their own, not sensibly at home during down time or something, but during the only face to face play time this dumb ass community has.
But what about all these new players this BRILLIANT strategy attracts? After being drawn in during character generation month when they say "ooh whats this can I play?" and being answered with "Play? We aren't playing! ahahahahaha, noob!". Well see then when they decide to join they can be given a SPARE character one of the regulars generated! And that's totally different to a premade character made by some random GM... because it's a premade character made by some random GM or a random player!
Of course one of the keystones of this strategy is that basically everyone is expected to invest time in making characters for game options they don't actually want to play and dad GM despite not even having 4E D&D on his list of supposed priority games to play has it on basically number one on his list of characters he expects the players to spend an entire monthly meet generating.
Basically even now the whole fucking "this month we make characters" bullshit is also STILL a bait and switch enterprise where dad GM attempts to sate the community interest in 3.x games by letting them make characters, vainly hopes forcing them to them make 4E characters will draw them in to the dark side, and plans in the near future to say "well this months turn is 4E (like it is every fucking month) and how can you protest, I mean you voluntarily made characters for this 4E game that month I arm wrestled all the kids into doing that!"
Now MY alternative strategy that I presented was if you want diversity in games as they claim, and want to see more people playing (and actually enjoying themselves). Just play a fucking game. Get through the character creation fast, get into the meat of the game and run a complete or at least eventful and well paced adventure in one fucking sitting. And if they repeatedly can't fucking do that for shit then step the fuck aside and watch someone who actually has those MINIMUM abilities of a successful GM do so.