Overkill

I ran a Tier III game (CCC-QCC20176) last Saturday at the local open AL meet at my FLGS. We had over 60 people signed up to play and as expected I had no trouble filling a table. We had a great time as usual but keeping the challenge interesting at this level meant overclocking the encounters, especially with a full boat of players, and the game went a bit long.

We'd also been discussing an upcoming local AL-centered con and I was of the opinion that I'd like to see it have table maxes lowered from seven to five. It would help differentiate our con from others in the area by having a better player to DM ratio, increase challenge and provide a bit more elbow room for player RP, all at the cost of a bit more space and DMs.

In any case both those things got me thinking about methods that could be used to provide a more challenging game for players who would like that. My initial concept, which I call Overkill, goes like this...

1. Number of Players is capped at 3 + 1 DM (minimum table size).
2. The game is run at Very Hard difficulty.
3. Encourage players to come and plan as a team.
4. To keep players from optimizing their teams too much, perhaps list three possible Mods that would be run when posting this event. Each player would need to have a PC eligible to play in each listed mod (not necessarily the same PC, of course).

The goal would be to provide an intense small-group challenge for motivated players who are looking for one. Given that we've been operating in the 'standard table' format in AL since the get-go, I thought it might be good to start considering other possibilities. Are there any AL hard-coded restrictions against running this format? Any other thoughts about what might make an interesting table format that fits in AL guidelines?

Sounds like the Lair Assault program that existed during Fourth Edition. In our area, we had a lot more people who were interested in the idea of Lair Assault than there were people actually enjoying playing Lair Assault -- reason being, if you design your adventure well enough to actually challenge optimized characters, you're either going to hit them in their unoptimized weak spots and require bizarre, otherwise unplayable builds, or you're going to focus on things characters can't optimize for and thus have to deal with in-play.

I think you'll get a solid response from the first run of such a program, but later runs will end up taking more time and effort than the players are going to put into it.

(This experience is also why I now have the belief that optimizers aren't really interested in being challenged, even when they say they do, rather than simply feeling superior by curb-stomping encounters that aren't designed to handle them, because when the encounters are ramped up to handle them, they lose interest. Your mileage may vary, of course.)

--
Pauper

That's good to know, Pauper. Good point about attracting optimizers. I'll try it as a test and see what happens.

Rule 37 there is not overkill! Just throw the dice and time to get even more dice!

Warmaster Horus said:

3. Encourage players to come and plan as a team.

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Drat, I'm out. I show up at conventions solitaire because part of the fun is playing with new people who I wouldn't meet otherwise.

But the concept does sound like fun, and if I ever do join a small-group, I'd try to talk the others into signing up.

Eltab said:

Drat, I'm out. I show up at conventions solitaire because part of the fun is playing with new people who I wouldn't meet otherwise.

But the concept does sound like fun, and if I ever do join a small-group, I'd try to talk the others into signing up.

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Wouldn't have to work this way and I agree that playing with new folks is a good thing about con play. This concept is a turn-about on Min-Maxing (Min on the PC side and Max on the DM side). Because there are so few players allowed it would be advantageous for players to pre-plan for melee, spell and healing support was my thought.

Points 3 and 4 seem contradictory.

Caliban said:

Points 3 and 4 seem contradictory.

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In a way, perhaps. The idea at first was to keep the mod being played a secret so players would have to plan their teams for a wide array of possibilities. However that doesn't really work in AL because someone could show up with a PC that had already been through the 'secret' mod. Therefore providing a trio of possibilities allows players to bring a viable PC for any of the listed mods but still consider team contingencies.