Exclusive Adventures for DnDAL

So you want to make even more exclusive adventures with special rewards that can only be run by a very few people in one country?

Colour me unimpressed. It's bad enough that most people who make up AL will never get to play the convention modules and now you want to make even more content that they won't be able to access? Come on, really? You really thought this was going to be a well received idea?

If anything the admins should be moving away from exclusivity, not towards it.

I don't understand the problem this is trying to solve. The problem I see every week is a lack of DMs and DM rewards (both for online play and in stores). Is there a similar problem of lack of engagement or volunteers for Admins or coordinators? If so, by all means give them cool stuff. But if not, please focus your attention elsewhere.

Let me add that epics are great, and they should be available at more conventions. Those should be special adventures that all players can look forward to playing when they finally scrape together the time and money to attend. Proposed special adventures for the elite seems only likely to make average players find a different hobby. Again, if we need special rewards for coordinators, I'm all for it, but only if that's needed.

It may be surprising (well maybe to nobody) but I come down on the side of conventions (because that is what I do and spend a lot of time working on).

I totally agree with the poster that community is formed at the store level. Been promoting that for years. What I try to do is take that one more step (as we did back in the LG days) and start connecting those store communities into region/state/and so on communities. That is part of the reason to have conventions and one of the huge reasons I started the Herald's Guild of DMs. I want to grow our pool of DM's and help connect resources to each other to make D&D better. We have lots of ideas to promote and expand that next year and we will see how many reach fruition.

Doing all of that costs money. Shows cost money. Running the HG costs money. Promoting AL at Gen Con costs money (and lots of it). Running AL costs money and special events cost money. I have to look at the tools and resources I have and figure out how to turn those into fun and exciting experiences for the players that will also pay the bills. If I'm going to pay for an Admin to come to the show to run something I want to know I am going to recoup the cost of them being there. If you're a store bringing in an RC you are doing the same thing. It needs to be offset with something. Whether that is increased attendance, marketing buzz, sales, etc.

Having said that I had nothing to do with these. I was told about them and said "That's a neat idea. I hope that happens and works". When I was told it was happening and WF might be a place they would want to try them out I came up with a model that worked to get all 6 admins to the show, add some cool events for the players, and not lose money doing so. Nothing really radical there. If I can leverage the 5% who can afford to travel and pay for cool things to help fund what I do for the other 95% then I will do it. Every time. Won't blink or waste time feeling bad about it. We created seven Dark Sun trilogies that are still being sent out for free. Stuff like this funded it. We have hours of Herald's Guild training seminars going into final edit for release to help DM's improve going up for free. Stuff like this funded it. BMG put thousands of dollars into both those projects and others and never charged a penny.

So I get wanting the idea of AL stuff should be for everyone. It should be equal across the board. It is just not how the world and economics work. Doing all of this costs money. That money has to come from somewhere. Conventions drive the creation of cool stuff like the Epics that are then released out to other venues. Conventions drove the creation of the Trading Post which is now out and about in the wild for more people to experience. Conventions will probably drive more content creation next year which will then trickle down into the expeditions and be available for everyone.

Sorry to hear you feel that way, steppedonad4. In our discussions so far (this concept has actually been forming for the better part of a year now) it's been really well received, both by local game stores as well as convention organizers. In fact, my local shops and DMs that raised similar views about perceived exclusivity were pretty keen on hearing about the potential for more public roll outs of these adventures as time elapsed.

The item rewards aren't any more powerful than what is available in a traditional Expedition. They may be a bit more specific in flavor but no mechanical advantage would be granted - this isn't an opportunity for players to "get stronger", but rather for players to explore some more niche topics and events in and around the Moonsea that may not otherwise fit into the scope of a normal season of Expeditions.

Final details aren't set, but would this help?

*) Admin creates and deploys adventure for whatever format is available -- convention, LGS, or other public play
*) 12 months after creation, RCs & LCs get access to run it at their events (as above)
*) 24 months after creation, becomes available for public consumption (any DM globally)

I think I might be a minority as well, then.

I dislike the idea of convention special as whole and this seems to add to this. I want to players/community to experience as much of the season as possible, and with hardly any conventions in Europe and them not all being able to travel to due time/money/various other reasons this makes it impossible.

For example the whole of season 2 was concluded in an epic. Now we leave season 2 somewhat open ended since basically none of my players (nor I for that matter) have been able to play that.

I can say for my part and the community I play in that if season 3 ends the same way and/or we even add more content that we will not have access too it will drive people away.

steppedonad4 said:

So you want to make even more exclusive adventures with special rewards that can only be run by a very few people in one country?

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Please note question 4 where these are released to the entire DnDAL public for play after some time. Everyone would eventually get to run them, so I'm not sure I understand your meaning.

I like it! Keep it more exclusive than not, to begin with. There should also be an approval process or rewards template or something to keep stories and treasures in line with rank and file play. Also any RC running their game needs to maintain at least equal time running Fai Chens... :>

Ovinomancer1981 said:

For example the whole of season 2 was concluded in an epic. Now we leave season 2 somewhat open ended since basically none of my players (nor I for that matter) have been able to play that.

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That's not exactly true. The Epic occurs between DDEX2-13 and DDEX2-14.

Ovinomancer1981 said:

I can say for my part and the community I play in that if season 3 ends the same way and/or we even add more content that we will not have access too it will drive people away.

Click to expand...

The season 3 epic occurred between DDEX3-4 and DDEX3-5. So it has already occurred.

The season 4 epic occurs before DDEX4-1.

skerritthegreen said:

That's not exactly true. The Epic occurs between DDEX2-13 and DDEX2-14.

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The point was that they couldn't experience the whole epic battle with all the cults (and defeating them) DDEX 2-14 was merely aftermath.

My whole point was that you should not add content that is not available to everyone in the world, especially not if they have some sort of major event in a over arcing plot line, since everyone wants to play that not just the people that happen to live in the US and can attend a con