It's been postulated in some other posts on this forum that part of the delay for the 3 books has been because FFG is looking to have a strong release for Star Wars: Legion. This is completely understandable from a business perspective, as FFG's bread and butter are board/card/strategy games in the same line, and earns them the most money. There have also been arguments made that it is okay because "FFG is a small company" and that we should feel lucky that they are successful enough to even bother with the RPG line (paraphrased from another user's response to my original post in Absol's "Statistics" thread.

My original reply to the idea presented in that thread that Legion is the reason for the delay in SW RPG line books:

-------------------

If FFG was truly serious about supporting the RPG line they would've done a few things:

1. Within 6 months of launch began development and cultivation of an organized play environment. Litterally take a page out of Paizo and WotC's book, and make serialized pre-published adventures. Even with the lead time that the license overlords impose, they could work out the scheduling to have regular organized content releases. Even if they didn't get into the micro-adventures, they could've provided structures to play the already published adventure material in an organized play fashion.
2. Found a way to re-negotiate their contract so that they could release electronic books of their content ala Paizo and WotC. As long as a profit is being generated, I don't see how this can not be a win-win-win in the FFG-Disney/LAL, and EA triumvirate. The additional funds from the PDFs even if they ended up paying 60~80% out to Disney et. al., they would be establishing a broader fan base, and make it so people who can't afford the physical books could still purchase the content legally. As it stands, a good number of people engage in downloading content in a less than reputable manner because they have no alternative. I know that I, as a GM, would probably require evidence of ownership of the relevant books that a character may draw on (A printout/scan of a watermarked pdf would be sufficient) in order to make sure my online players were supporting the company. This kind of requirement also ties in with #1, as I'm sure that Paizo (and maybe D&D?) requires that for any Society legal character played at a table, the player must provide evidence to the GM that they lawfully own the content.
3. Hold to their schedules and communicate deviations in release schedules to their customers.
4. Developed electronic tools and materials to help their customers. Quite literally, with a system as huge as FFG's Star Wars, it is unwieldy at best to keep track of where each player option is located in the books. A character generator regularly updated with content, should not be that difficult to deal with, and along with PDFs, negotiated the rights to. In fact, they could've gotten really fancy, and tied the character generator to your pdf purchases, and unlocked that books content in the generator for your sole use. Then they could've made it able to generate PDF printouts of the character sheets, watermarked in a way that allows players to participate in #1 without carrying around a tablet full of pdfs, and/or physical books.
5. Developed companion materials... Like Maps! How hard would it take to make the maps from Imperial Assault, and all their other star wars games into usable maps for the rpg? I mean this one they literally just need to re brand the things and throw them out on the store (or the images in PDFs).

I may be a little upset about the constant delays, just like everyone else.... I am hopeful that if EA loses the Star Wars license as rumored, it would open up the opportunity for FFG to gain the rights for electronic sale and distribution of the rpg books.

Sorry for the rant.

------------------------

I do want to reply to the idea that FFG should get a pass on some of their PR/Marketing faux pas. The whole idea that delays and such are okay because FFG is a small company is kind of silly because:

1. The nearest competitor products in RPG lines are Path/Starfinder by Paizo, and Dungeon & Dragons by WotC. Other competitors for our RPG player dollars include Catalyst Games (Shadowrun), Onyx Path Publishing/White Wolf (Exalted 3rd edition, Vampire the Masquerade, Werewolf: The....), and Green Ronin Publishing (Mutants & Masterminds, Fantasy AGE RP, Dragon Age the RPG, etc...). The only one that I can think of that could be categorized as a "large" company is Wizards of the Coast, with the next biggest being Paizo (which doesn't have a huge amount of people either).
2. I'm going to use Paizo as an example, as it is the one I am most familiar with in terms of release schedules. I've never heard of a product of Paizo's experiencing anywhere near the gap in time after deadlines as the FFG's SW RPG line has hit. Even taking into account the "Licensing" hoops, all that should be nailed down before any announcement is made for a product (which has been been presented as 2nd hand knowledge by some others on this forum that this is how the process works). If Paizo's release schedule were this flakey, they would've died off years ago.
3. PR Costs nothing and buys a lot of good will, for a modicum of time invested.

Along the lines of the PR faux pas:

1. I think the biggest "elephant" in the room is that FFG has been incredibly tight lipped about why the delays have kept occurring even after production/printing has resumed. This does not foster goodwill towards the people they really need it from, aka. the customers. It is perfectly valid business choice to not want a bunch of new products competing for the same dollars, in the same time frame. I totally get that. What isn't cool is not simply admitting that, and then committing to a reasonable time frame for the delayed content. There would be 100% less hysteria over this topic, and about that much less disappointment if a path forward was given.
2. Because of the erratic delays of unpredictable length, people can't plan their purchases, and so I imagine (yes this is speculation) that will hurt pre-orders both direct from FFG/Asmodee, and from LFGS. This only makes people want to give other products a try.
3. Mismanagement of the RPG line has likely put a bad taste in some of the customer bases' mouths (so to speak), and may actually hurt sales of their new product. I would imagine there were many fans of the RPG line who are also fans of the other games (Destiny/X-Wing/Armada/Imperial Assault) who were probably going to give Legion a spin, who may not now, either out of spite, or a lack of faith in the company to stick to its own published release schedule.

The funny thing about the entire thing is I AM OKAY with the delay and staggering. As someone that has purchased the entire RPG line in hard back, and sunk money into other FFG games, I like and approve of the company and their products in general. I just feel that people need to stop making excuses for what amounts to bad PR/Customer Service. It's okay to criticize so long as it is constructive (providing potential remedies instead of just listing problems).

So what are all of your ideas on this subject, I'm genuinely curious?

I think the main problem is a consistent failure to meet their very general release dates. "1st quarter of 2018" is a three-month window...if you consistently miss a projected date, then you change your projections . That's the only thing that really bugs me. I like having the books in hand "as soon as physically possible," and I can appreciate the tendency to be optimistic about things...but I would greatly prefer a longer delay if it meant I could plan to purchase a book. Honestly, the FFG Star Wars line has fallen out of priority for me, and I'm only now realizing it's because I don't get excited about the release of new books anymore. I love them when I see them, but after being consistently disappointed I just don't get excited about them like I used to. And so my very limited gaming funds are prioritized for Kickstarters and D&D. I wish it were different.

1 hour ago, TrystramK said:

There have also been arguments made that it is okay because "FFG is a small company" and that we should feel lucky that they are successful enough to even bother with the RPG line (paraphrased from another user's response to my original post in Absol's "Statistics" thread.

So, few if any employees of FFG read these forums with any regularity. That said....

As the originator of the offending quote, let me clarify my position:

1. RPGS are a niche market by any measure
2. RPGS are a tiny portion of FFG's bottom line
3. We aren't entitled to a gosh darn thing.
4. if I have to choose between blog updates and having books actually be written, I choose the latter.

So, while we armchair businessfolk are plenty comfortable pontificating from our easy chairs, none of us really has any insight into how or why FFG does what they do. We can guess all day long, and indeed some of us revel in the opportunity. But at the end of the day, FFG's process is a black box to us and even if we're right we'll never know. Like @awayputurwpn , I too wish it was different, but it isn't and I'm not going to get bent out of shape about it. Keep on keepin' on, FFG, and my wallet will too.

But it's also important to note that I don't buy anything but the gaming books, so I am clearly not the target market for their Star Wars line and probably in the minority of their customer base as a result.

1 hour ago, TrystramK said:

Within 6 months of launch began development and cultivation of an organized play environment. Litterally take a page out of Paizo and WotC's book, and make serialized pre-published adventures. Even with the lead time that the license overlords impose, they could work out the scheduling to have regular organized content releases. Even if they didn't get into the micro-adventures, they could've provided structures to play the already published adventure material in an organized play fashion.

I'm extremely grateful FFG made no attempts to establish organized play. While many participants in organized play are great people, Adventurer's League and Pathfinder Society do tend to attract rules-lawyers with a self-righteous sense of fairness (which they use to equivocate about their bad behavior at the table). There's also the small subset of terrible humans who participate in organized play because they get kicked out of private game groups and have nowhere else to game.

Combine all that with the sacred status so many Star Wars fans give their particular interpretation of the source material? It's a recipe for socially maladjusted disaster. WotC and Paizo are both larger than FFG/Asmodee, with more built out infrastructure for the format, and they still have trouble keeping out abusive players and even abusive gamemasters unless someone complains loudly on the internet. The Mouse would only need to see a few blog posts about toxic behavior at FFG sanctioned organized play tables to shut the whole thing down, and possibly pull the license.

From what I understand, there were some issues with the printer in China. This is why FFG switched to a USA based printer for Genysis. I heard that the backlog for the SWRPG books happened when the entire first print run of Dawn of Rebellion had to be trashed and redone. Of course, I don't work for FFG, so take that with a grain of salt.

I also play X-Wing and I`m sorely tempted by Legions, but my friends mainly play GW games, so that`s where most of my miniature wargaming experience is from. One of my biggest frustrations with FFG isn`t so much the delayed releases since they give me more time to set aside some money to buy the latest book(s), my beef is with the glacial pace of reprints. When I first got into X-Wing, it took forever to get more ships because I always had to wait months at a time for restocks. That could spell trouble for Legions since those models require assembly and painting. That means there's a lag between purchase and the ability to put a model/unit on the table. Given my experience with GW games, the tournament scene does a lot to drive sales, people will start new armies or add to existing armies with the next tournament as a deadline. If the can't get the units they need/want in time to get them built and painted before the next tournament, they might end up moving on to another game. I can't claim to know the reason behind the slow pace of reprints (I presume it's money), but if FFG can't get it sorted out, at least for Legions if nothing else, interest might fizzle out pretty quick.

I have to admit that the delays don’t bother me that much! Yes it gets frustrating when you’ve pre-ordered a book that you really want & it doesn’t turn up for months but ultimately it doesn’t affect my enjoyment of running the game!

For me I only really find the location books useful & I use these for mining location ideas & the like, rather than using their contents as they stand. I tend to find that the career books can get overwhelming with the amount of new specs & gear & the ones I have purchased hardly get used!

As a GM I prefer to make up my own adventures, using my own settings & populating those with (hopefully) interesting characters, plots & challenges! I’m also lucky in that my group like to keep it fairly simple as far as specialisations go... As long as they’ve got a trusty blaster pistol & a (sort of) reliable ship they’re happy to take on the galaxy!

So yeah, it’s great when FFG announce something that I’m interested in but I can live with the wait, I can always make stuff up until it arrives & then enjoy it when it eventually turns up

11 hours ago, sfRattan said:

WotC and Paizo are both larger than FFG/Asmodee

WotC yes, Paizo not even close. Asmodee is huge, and FFG's staff and production are massive (in comparison to the rest of the industry). Paizo might produce more RPG books than FFG, but nowhere near more product at all, and that's without even considering X-Wing which is a license to print money.

14 hours ago, themensch said:

As the originator of the offending quote, let me clarify my position:

...

So, while we armchair businessfolk are plenty comfortable pontificating from our easy chairs, none of us really has any insight into how or why FFG does what they do. We can guess all day long, and indeed some of us revel in the opportunity. But at the end of the day, FFG's process is a black box to us and even if we're right we'll never know. Like @awayputurwpn , I too wish it was different, but it isn't and I'm not going to get bent out of shape about it. Keep on keepin' on, FFG, and my wallet will too.

Haha, it wasn't offensive friend. I just take the position that, as you stated, FFG's black box is needlessly obtuse about what should be a simple PR announcement. I would put forward that the people who would write "the blog post" would not likely be the people working on the product lines, and thus not take away from actually getting the books we all enjoy so much to market. We also aren't talking about items in the development life-cycle, but items that have encountered errors in shipping and distribution, which is a silly thing not to simply make a general announcement about, apologize to the customer base, and a brief statement as to the path forward. That is FFG's problem from my standpoint, not product development.

I'm with you on just letting FFG do their thing. They make a good product, and I'm not going to stop supporting them over what is likely things beyond their control.

13 hours ago, sfRattan said:

I'm extremely grateful FFG made no attempts to establish organized play. While many participants in organized play are great people, Adventurer's League and Pathfinder Society do tend to attract rules-lawyers with a self-righteous sense of fairness (which they use to equivocate about their bad behavior at the table). There's also the small subset of terrible humans who participate in organized play because they get kicked out of private game groups and have nowhere else to game.

Combine all that with the sacred status so many Star Wars fans give their particular interpretation of the source material? It's a recipe for socially maladjusted disaster. WotC and Paizo are both larger than FFG/Asmodee, with more built out infrastructure for the format, and they still have trouble keeping out abusive players and even abusive gamemasters unless someone complains loudly on the internet. The Mouse would only need to see a few blog posts about toxic behavior at FFG sanctioned organized play tables to shut the whole thing down, and possibly pull the license.

To be fair, D&D and ????Finder are very rules heavy to begin with. Having been on both sides of the table at organized play, I can definitely see where you are coming from. Problem players (and occasionally GMs) usually get ferreted out pretty quickly and resolved from my experience. The problems you are talking about though are in any organized play setting, regardless of game (Magic, Destiny, etc...). That's why there are Judges/GMs.

I would caution against over generalizing people with social awkwardness and bad manners are "terrible" people. Sometimes, its just that no one has ever pointed out that their behavior is a determent to both themselves and the table. The GM at the table should take the time to counsel them about their behavior and what they could do to mitigate it, or if they feel uncomfortable about it, pass it up to the regional people to deal with. Sometimes though, all it takes is a little compassion and a "Hey friend, that's not cool, just chill.." from another player to shut bad actors down. It's so much easier to "Ban" people rather than help them realize they should not do the annoying/detrimental behavior. If the bad actor is a GM, don't go back to their table. The easiest way to get rid of such people is to never go back, if they are really that bad, that person's game session will likely soon never fill enough to run a game, because players talk and warn others about bad GMs.

Obviously I am not talking about people engaging in physical violence, nor am I talking about people who refuse to follow GM direction to cease a behavior. Those individuals should be removed from the table at a minimum, and counseled later if appropriate.

That said organized play can be a fun experience, in a public environment with lots of other people around who can help if things go sideways.

Organized play for star wars RPG would probably need some kind of short "Players Guide" that detail the expectations of the era being played in, and what is considered canon for the organized play group. Individual interpretations of GMs as far as the setting goes is a moot point. All players/GMs participating in organized play would have to agree on the game canon and stick to it. Not really hard to squash that concern.

Overall, my point about putting in organized play was simply for the new blood it bring in, and help keep the fan base energized.

Thank you for your comments though, and I'm sorry your organized play experiences have been so poor.

8 hours ago, ImperatorRegnum said:

I also play X-Wing and I`m sorely tempted by Legions, but my friends mainly play GW games, so that`s where most of my miniature wargaming experience is from. One of my biggest frustrations with FFG isn`t so much the delayed releases since they give me more time to set aside some money to buy the latest book(s), my beef is with the glacial pace of reprints. When I first got into X-Wing, it took forever to get more ships because I always had to wait months at a time for restocks. That could spell trouble for Legions since those models require assembly and painting. That means there's a lag between purchase and the ability to put a model/unit on the table. Given my experience with GW games, the tournament scene does a lot to drive sales, people will start new armies or add to existing armies with the next tournament as a deadline. If the can't get the units they need/want in time to get them built and painted before the next tournament, they might end up moving on to another game. I can't claim to know the reason behind the slow pace of reprints (I presume it's money), but if FFG can't get it sorted out, at least for Legions if nothing else, interest might fizzle out pretty quick.

Most of my frustration isn't over the fact that there is a delay, but with the fact that there is no PR statement that would take maybe 2 hours to author, pass through legal, and then publish just letting us know there was an error, especially if the error was a 3rd parties. I mean I can see the point of not "bad-mouthing" their partners, but such an announcement doesn't have to do any blame laying, rather it just needs to give a little reassurance that things are back on track and will proceed normally.

Although the insights you've brought up about the tournament scene being integral to miniature games is quite interesting. With how FFG's reprint/shipping issues are recurring, do you think Legion may be in for a rough time? I'd hate to see it tank, but maybe if it is a little turbulent, FFG will "get it sorted out," and by it I mean the printing/shipping issues.

One thing that was pointed out to me by one of my players is that there is a good likelihood that FFG could release an RPG book on the same day as Legion, as the customer bases do not necessarily have a lot of overlap. Basically his point was that Role Player =/= Miniature gamer. Do you all think this may be the case?

2 hours ago, TrystramK said:

Haha, it wasn't offensive friend. I just take the position that, as you stated, FFG's black box is needlessly obtuse about what should be a simple PR announcement. I would put forward that the people who would write "the blog post" would not likely be the people working on the product lines, and thus not take away from actually getting the books we all enjoy so much to market. We also aren't talking about items in the development life-cycle, but items that have encountered errors in shipping and distribution, which is a silly thing not to simply make a general announcement about, apologize to the customer base, and a brief statement as to the path forward. That is FFG's problem from my standpoint, not product development.

I'm with you on just letting FFG do their thing. They make a good product, and I'm not going to stop supporting them over what is likely things beyond their control.

Glad I didn't offend. I definitely agree that I wouldn't handle my marketing and PR the way FFG does, but I can say I've worked in companies both large and small and it wouldn't surprise me in the least if blog posts were written by the CEO whilst in the loo. For FFG's stance on their internal workings, maybe they have good reason to keep quiet. I wonder if anyone's analyzed the data on the number of blog posts per product to get a feel for this?

2 hours ago, TrystramK said:

Most of my frustration isn't over the fact that there is a delay, but with the fact that there is no PR statement that would take maybe 2 hours to author, pass through legal, and then publish just letting us know there was an error, especially if the error was a 3rd parties.

To boot, any time someone would call or write customer service, we'd get conflicting vague non-answers, the sort of thing one would expect from a cable company, not a gaming company.

2 hours ago, TrystramK said:

One thing that was pointed out to me by one of my players is that there is a good likelihood that FFG could release an RPG book on the same day as Legion, as the customer bases do not necessarily have a lot of overlap. Basically his point was that Role Player =/= Miniature gamer. Do you all think this may be the case?

I think it's hard to say. I'd imagine there's a sizable contingent of players that do one or the other, but it seems like there's more folks that do both, or at least would buy legion minis for the RPG.

2 hours ago, TrystramK said:

One thing that was pointed out to me by one of my players is that there is a good likelihood that FFG could release an RPG book on the same day as Legion, as the customer bases do not necessarily have a lot of overlap. Basically his point was that Role Player =/= Miniature gamer. Do you all think this may be the case?

The retailers who stock the product only have so much money and shelf/inventory space for products, too. FFG also has to worry about them having the bandwidth to bring in a whole bunch of Legion, X-Wing, Armada, Imperial Assault, and RPG stuff at the same time. And that's not even mentioning other FFG (or Asmodee) games that come out around the same time. It doesn't matter if FFG expects the consumers will buy everything (thanks, tax return!) or be in separate silos & thus not care; if the retailers can't/won't stock something, the consumer won't be able to buy it.

Well, not without paying crazy shipping & handling from FFG, anyways.

37 minutes ago, themensch said:

To boot, any time someone would call or write customer service, we'd get conflicting vague non-answers, the sort of thing one would expect from a cable company, not a gaming company.

No Disintegrations took 10+ weeks to come out in the UK after its release in the US. There was no info on it, stores had no idea what was going on from the UK Distributor (also owned by Asmodee) and there was such a black hole of information that a number of people resorted to ordering it from the US/Australia and got it well before it came out over here. Then Ghosts of Dathomir came out a week after the US release, and with Dawn of Rebellion we're back to 3-4 weeks after.

Communication has always been bad, but in the last few years the amount of it has significantly increased. In part that's because of size and bloat, the company is simply so big and has so many products and staff that it's going through some sort of mid-size company transition, where PR releases are the only info you get, not yet at the point of having an effective social media platform to answer queries or resolve problems.

15 hours ago, Otakuon said:

From what I understand, there were some issues with the printer in China. This is why FFG switched to a USA based printer for Genysis. I heard that the backlog for the SWRPG books happened when the entire first print run of Dawn of Rebellion had to be trashed and redone. Of course, I don't work for FFG, so take that with a grain of salt.

I could totally believe this. Some of the FFG books have been acceptable, but noticeably lower quality than previous ones as far as bindings, paper, print, etc goes. I suspect the Chinese printer was cutting corners, and FFG finally got fed up with it.

DOR was announced on the 11th of July
It went to 'at the printers' around the 21st of November. That's a 4 month development, writing, artwork and approvals time, which isn't unusual.
It went to 'on the boat' 3 weeks after the other books did, but still ended up on the same boat.

Given it went to 'on the boat' after books that had gone to print before it, and didn't have a significant delay, I can't see how that idea reconciles with the actual timeline of what happened when, unless FFG are simply being misleading with their updates.

Assuming we don't treat FFG's updates as entirely fictitious, then Dawn spent longer in development (and approvals) but had a pretty quick turnaround time to get printed and onto a ship.

As someone who has played and plays a lot of different RPGs from different companies, RPG books are always* late to drop. I paid for a Cypher System book at GenCon that was supposed to drop in October that still hasn't released. Yeah, it's unprofessional to promise a product and not deliver it on time. But there isn't much in the way of financial accountability in a small hobby that's 99% D&D/Pathfinder and 1% everything else. You can protest with your wallet but if getting the book is more important than holding publishers accountable, being angry doesn't solve anything. Cards and little toy models are the bread-and-butter of game stores which means the same is true of game stores.

In the end, I assume every SW book is going to be much later than projected. That way I'm never disappointed.

The whole "Living Campaign" phenomena is a by-product of convention play which makes it anathema to a narrative system. By that I mean, Living Campaigns, like the old "Dawn of Defiance" SW RPG from WoTC, are pre-scripted dungeons that railroad players into one-or-two predetermined conclusions. I should also know because I wrote Living Campaign adventures for Shadowrun 4th Edition's Manhattan convention campaign.

When you really break them down, pre-scripted FFG Star Wars adventures are more like fleshed out plot books than linear dungeons. Trad D20 games have pretty specific rules for dice roll interpretations but FFG SW is kind of loosey-goosey and heavily dependent upon GM style. It would be frustrating as heck to go from one convention GM who interprets 1 success, 2 disadvantage one way to a convention GM who interprets it another way.

*Paizo is the exception because Paizo works on a subscription model and has to pump out at least 1 book a month.

7 hours ago, coyote6 said:

The retailers who stock the product only have so much money and shelf/inventory space for products, too. FFG also has to worry about them having the bandwidth to bring in a whole bunch of Legion, X-Wing, Armada, Imperial Assault, and RPG stuff at the same time. And that's not even mentioning other FFG (or Asmodee) games that come out around the same time. It doesn't matter if FFG expects the consumers will buy everything (thanks, tax return!) or be in separate silos & thus not care; if the retailers can't/won't stock something, the consumer won't be able to buy it.

Well, not without paying crazy shipping & handling from FFG, anyways.

This is the main reason I believe they won't release a mix of products on a big launch day.

6 hours ago, Concise Locket said:

The whole "Living Campaign" phenomena is a by-product of convention play which makes it anathema to a narrative system. By that I mean, Living Campaigns, like the old "Dawn of Defiance" SW RPG from WoTC, are pre-scripted dungeons that railroad players into one-or-two predetermined conclusions. I should also know because I wrote Living Campaign adventures for Shadowrun 4th Edition's Manhattan convention campaign.

When you really break them down, pre-scripted FFG Star Wars adventures are more like fleshed out plot books than linear dungeons. Trad D20 games have pretty specific rules for dice roll interpretations but FFG SW is kind of loosey-goosey and heavily dependent upon GM style. It would be frustrating as heck to go from one convention GM who interprets 1 success, 2 disadvantage one way to a convention GM who interprets it another way.

*Paizo is the exception because Paizo works on a subscription model and has to pump out at least 1 book a month.

Do you think that there is no way an organized play could work? I mean certainly a standard interpretations chart could be issued for GMs to use?

I do agree that organized play RPGs take the RP out of the G for many people. However, it is also a rare group that really gets deep into the RP aspects, and isn't driven by Loot & flashy attacks.

Thanks for the ideas!

12 hours ago, TrystramK said:

I would caution against over generalizing people with social awkwardness and bad manners are "terrible" people. Sometimes, its just that no one has ever pointed out that their behavior is a determent to both themselves and the table. The GM at the table should take the time to counsel them about their behavior and what they could do to mitigate it, or if they feel uncomfortable about it, pass it up to the regional people to deal with. Sometimes though, all it takes is a little compassion and a "Hey friend, that's not cool, just chill.." from another player to shut bad actors down. It's so much easier to "Ban" people rather than help them realize they should not do the annoying/detrimental behavior. If the bad actor is a GM, don't go back to their table. The easiest way to get rid of such people is to never go back, if they are really that bad, that person's game session will likely soon never fill enough to run a game, because players talk and warn others about bad GMs.

I'm very much not generalizing. I referred to 'terrible humans' as people who have been kicked out of private game groups (for doing awful things and refusing to reform) and show up for organized play (where they will likely continue to do awful things and refuse to reform) because they have nowhere else to go. That's separate from the sizable group of organized players who are no fun to play RPGs with because they are rules lawyers, and are nonetheless great human beings. In fact, such people are awesome miniature wargame players---they help you up your competitive game in ways no one else can---and I play minis games with them often.

Please don't put words into my mouth.

You're right. Most organized play participants are fine. But if I gave you a bag of M&Ms and told you that 1 in 20 was poisoned and would give you vicious diarrhea for a week before your body's slow processes flushed it out... Would you chance it? Or would you find another bag of M&Ms? Is there any ratio of poisoned to good M&Ms that would make you chance it? That's organized play . That will always be organized play, and I'll reiterate that I'm extremely grateful FFG hasn't tried it with SWRPG.

7 minutes ago, sfRattan said:

You're right. Most organized play participants are fine. But if I gave you a bag of M&Ms and told you that 1 in 20 was poisoned and would give you vicious diarrhea for a week before your body's slow processes flushed it out... Would you chance it? Or would you find another bag of M&Ms? Is there any ratio of poisoned to good M&Ms that would make you chance it? That's organized play . That will always be organized play, and I'll reiterate that I'm extremely grateful FFG hasn't tried it with SWRPG.

Sorry if you feel like I put words in your mouth. The distinction you made in this post of them having already been "counseled" which was not in your original response is precisely the distinction I was pushing for in my response.