Okay wegot the RPGA - which has pretty much turned into "Current version of D&D" player association. (not that there is anything wrong with that...)


There is the Pathfinder Society for those that play PATHFINDER. They seem to be chugging along pretty well. (One group of them meets at least once a month at the store)


White Wolf World of Darkness games had the Camarilla(?) or some group with a similiar name for awhile.  (Are they still around?)


Has there ever been an attempt at a group like those for a science fiction or Space Opera type RPG?


Could a player association like one of those mentioned work for a Sci-Fi setting game?  
Or maybe a "living campaign" of some kind in a space or Sci-Fi setting?



By-the-way, I know that about a year ago someone at Steve Jackson Games was actively thinking about a 'living campaign' kind of idea for a GURPS setting. Nothing was ever set up or announced tho.


- Ed C.

What game has a large enough fan base to pull this off, though?  Really?

I don't think even a GURPS attempt would get super far unless the implicit setting was Infinite Worlds somehow.  They did a Living Force game as well, so it's been done once with sci-fi at that scale for sure.

Don't get me wrong, it'd be cool to give it a shot.  But I don't think you'd be able to get a real nationwide/international thing going like the RPGA.

Maybe try to get something going and start small?  Regional or something?

Never having been a part of the RPGA or any similar groups, I'm not sure what one 'gets' out of it aside from 1) some exclusive product maybe, 2) ability to jump between games.  There's a serious tradeoff, to me, in that that same portability and necessary regulation (and I agree it is indeed necessary) works at cross-purposes to some of the most satisfying parts of the RPG experience - namely, having your PCs have a lasting effect on the game world (at whatever scale).

The 'RPGA' effect has the same side-effect as playing an MMO.  "Oh, man, and this one time, we killed this ancient black dragon."  "The one at the top of Demon Dragon Mountain?  Yeah, we did that too."  That feeling SUCKS.

I'm all for an attempt at coordination to try something cool, though.  Adventure-swapping, whatever.

Depending on how the rights issue was handled - I always thought the TRAVELLER universe was a prime candidate for this kind of thing.

if it was the SJG version, the GURPS version of the Third Imperium timeline - I could very easily do a "Living Marches" kind of thing.


- Ed C.

I suspect you're VASTLY over-estimating the current player base of Traveller. If any sci-fi game had a chance of doing it, it would maybe be Star Wars, though the division of that game among varying edition-fans (d6, D20, Saga) means even that isn't very likely.

RPGPundit

Star Wars already has an RPGA campaign..or at least a 10 part series of linked adventures. The Dawn of Defiance campaign.http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=starwars/article/dodcampaign

The Living Force campaign was a one year campaign that went from February 06 to February 07. http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=starwars/swlfwelcome

The Camarilla is devoted to Live Action White Wolf and they maintain a very strong popularity at conventions in California.   They usually boast 50-100 players at a Saturday night event.  

There was Living Seattle (Shadowrun) and Living SpyCraft, but they're gone now.   The Living Campaign is an extremely smart idea and great marketing tool, but it needs a strong organization.

The biggest problem with starting a new LC is you need a pipeline of Content and a nationwide network of GMs.  If you had that in place, you would have no issue getting players for even a moderately popular game.

I never saw a LC die from lack of players.   It was lack of content and much more importantly, a lack of GMs.   You must build in ongoing motivating factors to keep GMs willing to participate.  

The RPGA / MMO effect is nothing new.   Back in the 80s, we all talked about playing the various modules in the same way people talk about WoW raids.  And most of us played many modules repeatedly with different characters.

Quote from: Spinachcat;348983The RPGA / MMO effect is nothing new.   Back in the 80s, we all talked about playing the various modules in the same way people talk about WoW raids.  And most of us played many modules repeatedly with different characters.

This was exactly the case. For example - the Scourge of the Slave Lords case. Many gamers from different locations could relate because they had played it as the included pregens (which I still remember as Elweta (the female dwrven fighter) or "Ogre" (the human fighter) or Blodgett the halfling.) And they played the exact same encounters and everything.

Before the RPGA became the advertising arm of WotC, they used to support other games besides AD&D. There were even articles in Polyhedron magazine for Traveller, Star Wars, James Bond 007, FASA Star Trek, and Star Frontiers.

Arent mongoose planning to start there own living traveller campaign next year?

Quote from: Broken-Serenity;349020Arent mongoose planning to start there own living traveller campaign next year?

Yes.

One thing I always thought would be interesting, but be damn near impossible to co-ordinate, and a ton of work on the creative side, would be to have several teams playing through different adventures and the results of those games having an effect on the "meta-story" of the setting, if you will. I got to participate in something along those lines in a Traveller PbEmail game (with strategic/resource elements added in) run by Jon Ziegler back the the heyday of GURPS: Traveller. A lot of the game elements made it into the "Traveller News Service" articles back then, and I enjoyed the hell out of it. I'd definitely be up for something along those lines.

Quote from: Werekoala;349045One thing I always thought would be interesting, but be damn near impossible to co-ordinate, and a ton of work on the creative side, would be to have several teams playing through different adventures and the results of those games having an effect on the "meta-story" of the setting, if you will. I got to participate in something along those lines in a Traveller PbEmail game (with strategic/resource elements added in) run by Jon Ziegler back the the heyday of GURPS: Traveller. A lot of the game elements made it into the "Traveller News Service" articles back then, and I enjoyed the hell out of it. I'd definitely be up for something along those lines.

This.  A hundred times, this.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;348991

Quote from: Spinachcat;348983The RPGA / MMO effect is nothing new.   Back in the 80s, we all talked about playing the various modules in the same way people talk about WoW raids.  And most of us played many modules repeatedly with different characters.

This was exactly the case. For example - the Scourge of the Slave Lords case. Many gamers from different locations could relate because they had played it as the included pregens (...) And they played the exact same encounters and everything.

The same happened with Dragonlance. Different Raistlins would meet regularly at my game store to share their experiences and thoughts, just like their DMs shared their preparations, maps, handouts (a detailed diary of the Blue Lady...).
But of course they all knew that everything happened only in their separate versions of Krynn, not in one big setting.

I felt it was rather a feature than a bug. It was a community-building thing, the RPG equivalent to a TV nation guessing collectively, "Who shot J.R.?"

Quote from: jeff37923;349003Before the RPGA became the advertising arm of WotC, they used to support other games besides AD&D. There were even articles in Polyhedron magazine for Traveller, Star Wars, James Bond 007, FASA Star Trek, and Star Frontiers.

That's true, but I never felt that there was a genuine interest for the betterment of the hobby, or a way to make the RPGA Network a club for all gamers, across all game systems. It was all marketing. (I was a Regional Director during that time...)

Just as they weren't really interested in having functional memberships in other countries. Yes, a few members here and there, so that they could boast that they had members around the world. But that the German membership was so small that it was hard to fill even one official tournament table at a convention was not seen as a problem. (Half of all the names on the German membership lists I recognized from other places - there were convention organisers, and many writers and designers of German RPGs. Those were not D&D players, but interested to follow what TSR was up to.)

That mirrored how they handled their foreign editions. TSR didn't want to develop foreign markets with regards to their differing play cultures. They wanted easy-to-handle licensing deals (to be able to say "published in x countries and y languages"--marketing aimed at the market at home), which was one of the reasons why AD&D had such a hard time getting a foothold in Germany. Only when WotC took over and allowed their new licensee Amigo to publish AD&D in way suited to the German market it became a success story. The Adkison/Dancey WotC had--thanks to MTG--a much better grip on how the international business worked.
(And it is ironic that Hasbro's WotC fell back to the TSR doctrines, and subsequently killed 4e in Germany...)

Quote from: Werekoala;349045One thing I always thought would be interesting, but be damn near impossible to co-ordinate, and a ton of work on the creative side, would be to have several teams playing through different adventures and the results of those games having an effect on the "meta-story" of the setting, if you will.

TORG: Adventure modules contained feedback postcards where GMs could note how their group solved the module.

Legend of the 5 Rings: Events happening in CCG tournaments wound up in the metaplot of the RPG. AFAIK there was one particularly interesting turnout when the two finalists of one really big tournament decided to not fight and rather split the price - a result that AEG hadn't accounted for. So instead of just having to choose one of the prepared endings (I can only guess: one for each clan winning?) they had to devise something new.

Das Schwarze Auge: Parts of the setting Aventuria, the ongoing metaplot and political alliances used to get developed via a seperate PBM "barony game". Relatively early in the game the editorial team had a raffle in their magazine, "Aventurischer Bote". They invited players to send in their character sheets and backstory/accomplishments. Then they selected a huge bunch, made them nobles and gave them fiefs. There was a simple resource management sub-game attached, AFAIK. At certain times the barons had to send a report about happenings in their domains. (One of the referees worked in my game store.) Those things were reported in the "Aventurischer Bote" (which was a mix of an in-game newspaper as well as customer retention thingie. The game-within-the-game worked so well that they had one or two waves of invitations afterwards.
During one big metaplot event (a succession war) the barons had to swear allegiance to one side or the other. That was the tipping-of-the-scale event that decided the metaplot.

That last one sounds interesting, and maybe closer to what I experienced before. I was thinking more along the lines of several groups playing several *different* adventures, in different places (in-game) and those outcomes having an effect, not so much a bunch of people playing the same module and the aggregate outcome making a difference. If I said that right, that is.