Something happened last week in my local area there was a 5e D&D tournament. I know this was a popular event in the D&D in the 70s and especially the 80s, but as far as I know seemed to start to die out with the introduction of 2nd edition. I joined the hobby right as 2nd Edition came out and was quite young so I was never able to attend any of these events in their heyday, but in reading and listing to interviews with some of D&D founding members, it was not only popular, but highly profitable. It seems weird that something that was this profitable (according to interviews) would not have continued with D&D in a bigger fashion or at least be picked up by someone else, unless the culture had changed dramatically. I know that there are still many versions of “organized play” i.e. Adventurers League, Pathfinder Society, etc, but I believe people would not classify those as competitive. I also know that tournaments still happen at major events, but from what I can gather, they are not nearly as popular.
I use
to go to DragonCon every year before my son was born. I was there 1999 thru
2012, and there was an event that I played in a few times called “Cheese Grinder”. It appears that
they are still running these up to today, but the goal was to live the longest
in a series of death trap style rooms. You make the “cheesiest” character
within the guidelines and try to not die. If you die you are immediately replaced
by another person. I think it was $1-3 per character, and you waited in a bull
pen for your turn. It was competitive D&D in a sense, because you were only
out for yourself. These events were a lot of fun, I wouldn’t exactly call it a
tournament, but it had some of the same elements that a tournament might have.
 |
| Responsible for tournaments in the past. |
With the Old-School Revival being
gaining a lot of traction, and 5e being super popular in the past few years it
seems that these type of events might start gaining traction too. If it is
though, I am unaware of it. It also seems that with the advent of computers and
the technological revolution it would be easier to organize and get something like
this running. Would people play in it though? Here is the kicker from the story
above about the D&D tournament that was local here in town, it was a ghost
town. There are several possible reasons, the store hosting is very new and
this was an attempt to get people in the door. The city I am in has about 5
solid gaming stores with D&D Adventurers League running 5-10 tables per
event, so players in the area is not an issue. I also run a D&D club at my
local college with about 30 members, I offered to run a tournament at a games
day we were having, and I received no interest in the idea at all. Competitive D&D
was not accepted by newer generations in my group.
 |
 |
Could one of the Old School
Publishers like Goodman, Necrotic Gnome, Goblinoid Press, or Frog God Games
step up and organize these tournaments on a semi-regular basis? I know that
they are often extremely small companies, but I believe they could get a lot of
help from volunteers in the community. Or has the culture of D&D shifted
over the years and the tournament scene could never get to the place it was
before? The people that play D&D now are not into the idea of being competitive,
and only want to play a co-operative experience. Could WotC create a new competitive
scene with 5e D&D and promote it within the community? With Twitch and
YouTube taking off it seems like you could find a possible wider audience for
tournaments with D&D. ESports and D&D are popular on those mediums so
maybe the tournament scene could flourish?
 |
| Sweep the character sheet, do you have a problem with that? |
This brings us to the overall
question, should D&D ever be played competitively? D&D has its roots in
wargaming, and wargamers have tournaments all the time. Have role-playing games
separated themselves so far from the roots that tournaments are no longer a
viable option? I find it to be an interesting question. Have any thoughts on
the matter? Post below with your opinions.
Like my work? Follow me on Facebook here. I recently added a Donations Button for people who want to support the blog with a one-time donation. For those not satisfied with a one-time donation, please consider joining my Patreon. The button is above too.
Like my work? Follow me on Facebook here. I recently added a Donations Button for people who want to support the blog with a one-time donation. For those not satisfied with a one-time donation, please consider joining my Patreon. The button is above too.
As part of a slightly younger generation than you, who has been playing almost weekly for 3 years. I have this to say, sure competition is fun, but there are so many good competitive games these days, with huge esport events and tournaments all over the world, so I don't think we need dnd to be competitive, we need it to be something else than all the popular competitive games, we need it to be a gathering of friends. We need it to be a safe place where fun stories get made, and honestly I think dnd in general is really poorly designed to pit players against players, as a dm I've pitted my players against each other several times for different reasons, and the different classes are not designed for it, when fighting a dragon everyone can contribute in some way, but pit the players against each other and it's usually the one with highest initiative who wins, and if it's two different tables competing it won't be balanced either cause no two dms are the same. So yes competition is fun, but there are so many alternatives to competitive gaming that dnd needs to be an exception instead.
ReplyDeleteUsually competitions were team based though. There wasn't direct competition. More like figure skating, seeing who runs the dungeon the best for the most amount of points. Not head to head.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately with people always looking for hints on how to make the most powerful character builds in the various forums, including on Facebook, most seem to make it a competitive game. They work to find the best, most powerful, character to "win" the game. It is ok, if that is their groups style of play, but it isn't really cooperative play, they are trying to "beat" the DM. I have even seen references in some of these posts to DPS, which is a direct hold over from MMORPGs...
ReplyDeleteThat doesn't mean the tournament scene would be bad per se.
DeleteWe used to run competitive tournaments of AD&D (with prizes). Players generally entered as teams to play in two adventures over the weekend, each two hours in length. Points were given for both mission objectives and role-play and the winner was the one with the most points. Although most teams entered for the challenge and the fun, rather than to win a prize. The war stories at the prize-giving where "entertaining" solutions to the various problems were revealed was quite popular (especially since everyone had shared the same experience).
ReplyDeleteIt actually managed to draw a surprising number of groups out of the woodwork. There were a large body of gamers that just played with friends and were not very vocal or connected with "the hobby." They just liked to play the game with their friends.
It was lots of fun. I enjoyed creating competition modules and gamematering lots of people with different play styles. Also the playtest sessions where the gamemasters got to play the sessions were fun since there was a lot of years of play experience at the table.
This sounds really fun.
Delete