RPGA
The RPGA, or Role-Playing Game Association was an "elite" (read: retarded) group of screaming dipshits that ran "official" events for Wizards of the Coast back in the glory days of Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition. They were known for having bullshit rules that were intended to maintain DM Fiat rather than good storytelling or development, a userbase that was renowned for screaming bloody murder about anything non-core (if you dared to bring up the Expanded Psionics Handbook, alternate settings, or - god help you - house rules to cover blatant bullshit like the Rope Trick Bunker of Doom, then you were guilty of extra heresy and were to pay the price for it)_. RPGA DMs were utterly humorless and were likely to go Black Leaf on your ass (in real life) if you pissed them off. It's sad, too, because there's some legit (if rare) good to emerge from the RPGA as well.
Thankfully, due to the fact that the RPGA is one of the worst things ever conceived by a company in the history of man, it provided some of the best and most hilarious targets of field-tested lulz you will ever see in your entire life.
Synopsium and Origins
The RPGA started as a means to field-test official game modules, host official events, and even have several tournaments (yes, we're serious) regarding the "official" settings at the time, which meant Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk. d20 Modern was insanely rarely run in it, even though there was overpowering demand for it - the RPGA's core, after all, was organized by Wizards of the Coast, so naturally they promoted the settings they wanted to do well a fuck of a lot more than the settings that players actually enjoyed (see also: WOTC's pathological inability to sell Ravenloft (after suing for the rights, winning the suit, then failing to actually do anything with them no less), Spelljammer, Dark Sun, three of the most popular settings in the history of PNP RPGS). On the plus side, the events of the RPGA led to some successful player groups down the line, and there was some cool prizes (mostly things iike points for discounts on books and shit), but the main reason the RPGA existed can be boiled down to three reasons:
- A potential way for WOTC to advance its products and advance the plot in its settings (which never happened, before or after the Edition jump, unless you count those depressing Forgotten Realms fans who probably need a pillow after that ass-fisting).
- An Interesting, half-decent way to meet new DMs/Players, all whilst potentially winning cool stuff. Of course, a lot of this was off-set by the fact that an overpowering number of the people /tg/'s neckbeards met in the RPGA joined the RPGA specifically because they didn't have the social skills to find a regular, consistent game, something that, even by the neckbeardy standards of /tg/, is not hard to do. Seriously, it was hit-and-miss. You'd meet a few cool people there, and the rest of the place was populated by people strongly resembling Chris-Chan.
- Blatant E-Penis flogging. If you participated in official events, you would see utterly-humorless players and DMs who were ALL ABOUT their DCI score. Picture arguments over gamerscore on XBox Live. Now make it centered around D&D. You can now take pride in that you will never, even should you LARP from now till Velocirapture, will you ever be as soul-scarringly nerdy as the mental image you just imagined.
Naturally, whilst reasons #1-2 are pretty valid reasons (flaming stupid aside) for RPGA membership, that last one basically guaranteed that for as long as the group existed, it would be mercilessly trolled by /tg/, and left a burning pile of hilarious FAIL. Even if you didn't consider reason #1-2's failings (which were many).
Leaping Wizards - The RPGA in a Nutshell
The Spoony One from The Spoony Experiment was an RPGA DM once, and ran a few adventures at an RPGA event once which he kindly recounted for us on an episode of his show, Counter Monkey. The adventure called for a potential random encounter with a trio of level 1 NPC wizards, all with Magic Missile - a laughably easy encounter by 2nd Edition standards, since they had one level 1 spell per day, and even if they hit the same target for max damage, it wasn't very likely they'd kill it. Spoony, a bit miffed that the bulk of the adventure thus far had been specced in such a way that it was easymode the entire way thus far - especially when half the group ran highly optimised Clerics, causing them to steamroll encounter after encounter - decided to set up the encounter so that it actually had something resembling a challenge to it - one Wizard took Sleep, one Charm Person, and one Ray of Enfeeblement. Cast in this order (and with a masssive amount of luck), the first disabled four people (including the clerics), the second sicced the party rogue on the fighter (who pretty much one-shotted the guy), and the last fucked up the last man standing so bad he became overencumbered. Two wizards kept wailing on the warrior while the third murdered the clerics in their sleep. The ambush from these three Wizards caused the deaths of roughly half the party. The RPGA overseers at the event were furious with the fact that Spoony caused PC deaths, and called him to task for changing their spell loads, and they revoked Spoony's GM privileges.
Trolling the RPGA
Trolling the RPGA is fun and easy, and if you hate the sort of faggotry they've inspired over the years, there's plenty of ways to do something about it. Here's a few of /tg/'s time-honored favorites:
- Join the RPGA, then play a Capstone character. This only works in some events now that 4th Edition's arrived, but the general gist is to run a character with a 100% EXP penalty. This is not hard to do, but the general idea is to run a character who starts in one class, then at a given point, starts multiclassing out the ass. The idea is that by level 15, you have a character with a 100% EXP penalty and who cannot gain levels, but can run around forever securing more and more treasure, items, and wealth. This inspires much delicious anger from RPGA DMs.
- Play a pacifist monk who lights himself on fire, any character with Vow of Poverty from Book of Exalted Deeds (if you can slip it past), a Diplomancer character, or any class build that's hard to play but is certifiably capable of driving DMs into explosions of white-hot-rage because you refuse to fight your way through an encounter.
- Play anything remotely approximating this, or something openly racist or xenophobic.
- Find a way to play any "power" build using regular classes and allowed spells to rape every single encounter. It isn't hard. If you have some benefits or the campaign allows it, you can always run Pun-Pun.