Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal - part II

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

The real challenge to me is to get the idea of formation and tactics across to gamers who have never been exposed to it, without either leading them by the hand, or wiping them out.

Agreed; ran into the same thing with the 5e campaign, where the notion of somebody staying with the pack animals, somebody acting as a rear guard / lookout / sentinel, and similar tactics were just not part of the thing. I was surprised that there was nothing about this kind of thing in any of the 'How To Adventure' sections in any of the books, either, as I would think that this kind of thing is pretty basic.

As for formations, unless the party hires a lot of NPCs, it ain't gonna happen. The groups I've seen gaming at the FLGS are lucky to have four to five players, so the opportunity for using formations in game play just doesn't seem to be there; and with each player being a different class and / or race with wildly different abilities, there's even ledd need in the game mechanics for the kind of thing you and I are used to.

Also had a chance to listen in on both Adventurers' League and Pathfinder Society game play. Not for me; too formalized and way too rigid, from wta I was seeing and listening to.

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

Hmmm... Throw a Jajqi in with the Mrur, and if the Jajqi is destroyed, the Mrur lose the ability to fight in an organized manner. Hmmm.....

You got it; it works both ways, too, as players have to figure out who's the Jajqi and who's the Mr'ur in a real hurry. Had a great - and I do mean great! - moment once when a Priest of Belkhanu cast an Instantly Wipe Out Undead spell onto to see it dissipate on a Shielding spell. It too him several rounds of very messy combat to realize that there was a Jajqi in the mix. Figures by Reaper, Crocodile Games, and dear old GW; look in the Ancient Egyptian Mummy themed figures. Nightmares will ensue.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Also had a chance to listen in on both Adventurers' League and Pathfinder Society game play. Not for me; too formalized and way too rigid, from wta I was seeing and listening to.

I'm unfamiliar with both. What do you mean by "too formalized and way too rigid"?

Originally Posted by ChristopherKubasik

I'm unfamiliar with both. What do you mean by "too formalized and way too rigid"?

I'm in the same boat as you; I'll try to explain what these are, as it was explained to me.

Some of the 5e players mentioned that there is something called "Adventurers' League" for D & D; the idea is to have standardized player-characters that can be used in any D & D games run by any D & D GM, so that any player can use the same PC in any game. Okay, so far, so good; we did the same thing in our time with Phil, where any EPT PC could be used in any EPT game. What I was being told that kind of disturbed me was that if a GM was going to run a game that allowed League players, the GM had to agree to a set of - what for lack of a better description - were standardized terms and conditions of play in their game. GMs could not do house rules and had to play 'by the book', using only official, sanctioned, and authorized game materials. The idea, from what I was told, was to provide a standard - the word 'premium' was used - game experience for players, with the additional bonus of going up in League rankings; very similar to what GW (and other companies) used to have for their tournament play events.

The Pathfinder Society is both an in-game 'faction' and a similar organization for players. You complete a certain number of Pathfinder adventures, an you get rankings / levels in the society. Same thing for the GMs; no deviation from the book is permitted. I listened to several GMs reading aloud from the adventure booklet exactly as written, so that all players got the exact same wording. I also saw this at CinncyCon this past spring, where the event coordinator was literally reading from the adventure booklet through a bullhorn so that all players in the several groups got the exact same information in the exact same sequence; the role-playing sessions between readings were on a timer, so that all groups got the exact same time to play the exact same part of the exact same adventure.

I've never really seen anything like this in my entire gaming career, and I don't know what to make of it. I have no idea if this is coming from the games' publishers or what. I'm used to a very different style of play - free Kriegspiel / open sandbox - and I found this kind of game play just wasn't engaging me at all.

So, I don't really know what I was seeing and hearing. Any enlightenment from anyone would be welcome!

I'm not sure who did organized play first. Probably Games Workshop. They had "Outriders" back in the day who got perks and prize support for running games. Steve Jackson Games had "Men In Black". Anyhow, the idea was to reward someone for going into stores and run open demo games and tournaments to boost sales. At the time, I pitched the idea of fan-distributors who would sell stock to their local store and run demo games and playtests for perks, essentially doing an end run around the existing distributors who were at the time neglecting everything but Magic the Gathering. It got called the "Amway of gaming" even though there was no down-line pyramid in the concept.

Oh well, anyhow, at some point, possibly with WotC's success with organized Magic the Gathering play and their purchase of D&D, the idea of running leagues and organized play events that were easy to drop into for a single session came about. There's some aspect of the RPGA's living campaign world concept in there too in the sense of building community.

I've played Pathfinder "adventure paths." They really are dreadful; they reduce the referee to a rules parser. You could use a computer.

It's not limited to 5th edition; the highly mechanistic aspects go back to 3rd edition, and some elements as far back as AD&D 1st Ed.

I'd be very surprised if even a fraction of Paizo's and WotC's own playerbases gives any credence at all to "organized play", much less the large swathes of people who don't care about Pathfinder and D&D 5e.

It's mainly about pushing their products and building an ecosystem showcasing their games, and they enforce "Rules-As-Written" primarily to ensure the books they're selling are allowed to be used in those games.

I wouldn't worry about it overmuch, most RPG players have only ever heard of them on internet forums.

Thank you, everybody, for your insights on this - you've all been very helpful!

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

People are always worried about Imperial entanglements - nobody wants the OAL to come around, as they ask very hard questions and play by very - and I do mean very - hard rules.

Heck, even old Obi-wan hi Kenobi tried to avoid Imperial entanglements... didn't work though. Mayhem ensued...