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Dakkanaughts -

Looking for some feedback around organized play, from both a player and retailer perspective. If you have some time to answer a few questions and provide some color, I'd be incredibly appreciative.

As a Player -

1. What company has organized play that stands out to you as either very successful or very unsuccessful? What makes it that way?
2. What type of organized play events do you look for? Tournaments, league play, structured GM'ed events?
3. What makes organized play successful for you as a player?
4. Any other comments you have about organized play in general?

As a Retailer -
1. What Company does the best to support LGS owners with organized play? How do they do so?
2. What kind of support do you expect/need from a company to make organized play successful in your store?
3. How often should new organized play support be released to retailers?
4. What encourages you to run organized play events in your store?
5. Any other comments you have about organized play in general?

I'll raffle off some sort of Promotional Item/LE model on 8/21 to a random contributor for your help and feedback.

If you'd prefer to respond to me via PM, please feel free.

Thanks in advance!

As a Player -
1. What company has organized play that stands out to you as either very successful or very unsuccessful? What makes it that way?
2. What type of organized play events do you look for? Tournaments, league play, structured GM'ed events?
3. What makes organized play successful for you as a player?
4. Any other comments you have about organized play in general?

1. Privateer Press for certain, and *maybe* Corvus Belli, but their INFINITY WARCOR program only recently started up, and it's got some...growing pains, as to be expected.

2. In order of importance to me: League Play, Structured Events (esp. demos!), Tournaments, GM'd events

3. Believe it or not, making sure the Organizers and Event are truly 'organized'! And attendance! I realize that sometimes it is hard to get people to commit though...

4. Organized play is a really good thing - and when done well it not only helps sales, but helps grow a local commnity for a game - which of course really helps grow sales. I wish more companies would devote more resources to this type of thing.

From a player:

1. PP support for tournament and league play is very successful. Steamroller rules updated every year to support tournament play and keeping the tournament scene fresh. PP league play is tons of fun played in two so far this year and it's fun building your hero up using different points you earn from play
2. Tournaments and league play
3. The amount of people in my area that show up to these events 20+ people show up on a Wednesday night
4. Grows the community

as a now very occasional player (so feel free to disregard and exclude me from any prize draw if you just want responses from more active players)

1. from what's posted online PP have it more right than wrong (helped by having a game designed for it), regular changes are a good idea to keep tings fresh

2. probably events (I find them more fun) and couldn't commit to leagues anyway

3. enough supervision for the level of the players taking part (so more help for the inexperienced and also when big prizes are on offer and even experienced players are apt to act like jerks),
ringer(s) available to step in and make sure everybody has an opponent, it's awful to turn up expecting to play and be given a 'bye' into the next round and a sheepish apology what X has failed to turn up
either tables with identical terrain set by the organiser OR set by the players according to game rules (playing on a 'tight' table with a horde knowing you're almost certainly stuffed and looking at a next door 'open' table is no fun)
lots of players for all day games
keep it tight and herd those cats, make them start/finish on time

4. While it's not really my thing it's a major factor for a lot of people in what they play and buy (and so what the local and even online stores stock)

For those of you that are noting Privateer Press's OP: What about it makes it work? Is there something special about how events are organized? Is it because there's a consistent format and player base? A combination of multiple things?

How do you feel about FFG or WizKids organized play?

 cincydooley wrote:

As a Player -

1. What company has organized play that stands out to you as either very successful or very unsuccessful? What makes it that way?
2. What type of organized play events do you look for? Tournaments, league play, structured GM'ed events?
3. What makes organized play successful for you as a player?
4. Any other comments you have about organized play in general?

1. Magic the Gathering - hands down has the most mature organized play structure(s), with major events widely accessible AND in a variety of established (and clearly defined) formats.
1a. Privateer Press' tournament, league and event play structure is very mature. As both a player and an organizer, the rules packets and prize support make running (and playing) in the events relatively smooth.
1b. I don't play X-Wing or Armada, but have mates who do (and have also organized events). Apparently FFG's kits are pretty good as well.

2. I used to be a voracious tournament player of WM/H... but fatigue set in and now I'm kind of a rubbish player. I prefer to enter painting and modelling events. League play, from time to time.

3. There needs to be guidelines set down for anything that might be ambiguous. In this way, both MTG and Privateer Press have very strong positions. Corvus Belli also updates their errata frequently. Guidelines / schedules need to be enforced and most of all... judging needs to be fair. I can't overstate how a great event can easily go sour if the judges are perceived to show favoritism or are flexible/inconsistent in their rulings.
3a. A lot of events forget that the players need to eat. This should be built into the schedule.

4. Events live or die by the number of committed attendees. Pre-registration takes a lot of the guesswork out. Nothing sucks more for players (and the organizers!) than putting in all the work and having the event not occur due to lack of attendance. I've been to many stores where they think if they build it, players will come. This isn't always the case! When I ran WM/H events, I heavily advertised and then made sure that we had a core group committed so that we could afford the prize kit.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 cincydooley wrote:
For those of you that are noting Privateer Press's OP: What about it makes it work? Is there something special about how events are organized? Is it because there's a consistent format and player base? A combination of multiple things?

How do you feel about FFG or WizKids organized play?

The PP packets lay out in black and white what is supposed to happen. The packets are downloadable before the event by the players so they can plan what to bring. For the organizer, terrain requirements and setup is also clearly defined (and fixed). Scoring criteria is clearly defined. I find the events basically run like clockwork. The only thing the organizer really has to worry about when the event is running is providing in-game rulings, and approving conversions.

Personally, as a player I wish I could see more GM'd events that are structured around a single day campaign or weekend event. I think that the scenarios should be balanced and playtesting for unorthodox scenarios should be a given, but I get really tired of the "I'll take the best of what my list offers and you take the same amount from your list and we'll meet on a totally fair and equal battleground to slug it out" kind of scenarios. That isn't what war is all about, and having something to make the battles bigger makes each battle more fun. If you know that you have to hold the bridge or the invading army will ransack the village full of orphanages and puppy kennels, then you tend to have more reason for fighting to the last man, as opposed to simply being able to do your victory dance at the end of some arbitrary meeting of the generals...