[Adventurer's League] Not making it easy to find DMs

So my FLGS has been wanting me to DM Encounters for a while now. For the last 3 weeks in the transition from the old Encounters to the AL HotDQ, they have allowed me to run my own campaign (official 5e rules only) for new players. We all had a blast. But they also want me to DM HotDQ for AL. After giving it much thought, I let them know I will not be DMing them. The rules and guidelines for the AL just don't jive with my playstyle very well. It's a lot of extra bookkeeping and paperwork, and I understand why that is and why it's necessary for something like Organized Play. The other, and probably most important reason, is because AL adventures have to be done in a very scripted linear fashion. Again, I understand why since you need all PCs to follow the same plot points and adventure progression. But I'm an old school very sandboxy type of DM. That's the greatest appeal to me as a DM: players help shape and create the story based on their actions, which may not align with how the module goes. AL simply does not allow that.

For example, in HotDQ for AL, you cannot have the PCs either join with, or kill Cyanwrath. In a sandbox game, anything can happen.

So enough ranting and back to my point I want to try to make. After talking with my FLGS and giving them these reasons, they knowingly shook their heads in understanding. In my opinion, WoTC has made it hard to get DMs to run these adventures because the DMs hands are tied quite a bit in how to run the games, and there's a lot more work involved. I think this can be a problem. Heck, I've heard often that it's been a problem for quite a while--finding DMs. Not sure how they could resolve it though and still maintain the necessary balance issues within the league.

I agree with you, but I'd say that OP and sandboxing are mutually exclusive. Otherwise it wouldn't make sense to organize a campaign in which every group goes a completely different direction.

A lot of people like to run and play in OP-style games, and a lot of people don't. That hasn't changed since the 2e days of the RPGA's Living City.

Slavishly following the adventure is 100% no longer the rule. If you check out the Adventurers League Player's Guide:

http://media.wizards.com/downloads/dnd/ADVLeague_PlayerGuide_TODv1_print.pdf

Read up on the DM guidelines. Quoting directly from the guide:

Make decisions and adjudications that enhance the fun of the adventure when possible.

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The Adventurers League specifically gives DMs permission to adjust the story, the threat posed by monsters, and anything else in the adventure. The only things you need to stick to are the treasure rewards, primarily to keep things fair between players. Especially if you're DMing for the same group of players, you can add in NPCs, plot lines, allies, and anything else you want.

As the DMs at GenCon can tell you, the only rule to follow is to run a good game. The adventure is there as a tool to that end.

I know that in the past many organized play programs for RPGs emphasized that the DM needed to follow the module as written, but that's not the case for Adventurers League.

Good to know! Thank you very much. My impression from my reading was that it was very linear because of things like how treasure was recorded, and how Cyan could not die because he was needed later on (sort of railroady).

So you've clarified that part for me. Thank you.

The new AL requirements on Encounters are a bit more onerous on both DM and players, because of the need to be able to feed legitimate characters to other AL events. I'm not going to condemn the decision, but it does seem like it'll be a little less attractive to DMs, and less conducive to the kind of casual play that Encounters seemed to thrive on (in the one FLGS where I've been participating, to be clear, I make no claim about the broader program). Perhaps WotC feels that 5e will appeal more to the core fan base of longtime players, and that they'll be up for a more serious approach?

Anyway, I thought, from my first look, that HotDQ /did/ leave you some leeway in how to run the adventure, maybe not to the point of being a sandbox, but it is fairly loose for a published adventure as opposed to a campaign resource (MiBG, by contrast, was more campaign resource than adventure). Where I do feel the restrictions is in not being able to change the level or allowed chargen options (again, because the characters may be used down the line in other AL events). That's discouraging, because the freedom to do so in prior seasons helped keep things interesting, even when you had repeat players who were tired of 1-4th, or who wanted to play a PH character instead of Essentials, or whatever new book they were pushing that season.

Sacrosanct said:

and how Cyan could not die because he was needed later on (sort of railroady).

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That's actually something DMs and players have to live with in organized play.

An NPC you failed to protect (or managed to kill) might very well be alive (dead) in the follow up adventure, because the majority of reported games did differently than your table and that's what's deciding the official outcome for the follow up modules.

If you only run for the same group of people you can change the plot however you like. Although the more you diverge from the official plot, the more and more work you will have to modify follow up adventures to the point where you might just as well play something entirely else. But if you do that (fixed table and wildly diverging plot) it really leads to the question why you are playing organized play at all.

Mirtek said:

But if you do that (fixed table and wildly diverging plot) it really leads to the question why you are playing organized play at all.

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Hence why I said I'm not


In all fairness, I was never big on OP even back in the 80s. I really liked the freedom to do pretty much whatever I wanted, and houserule however I want. For example, in 5e, I hardly ever use minis (only for general marching order or large battles) and I houserule healing to "Get back all your spent HD after a long rest, but that's it. No auto heal to max after long rest". The nature of OP does require a fair amount of consistency between all DMs. I'm not complaining about that, and I totally understand why. But my preferred style is to run games like I like to run them. And from what I can gather, that's making it hard to find enough DMs. My understanding is that finding DMs was hard enough already. And honestly, I don't now what WoTC could do to make it easier. They are already giving a bunch of perks to DMs. It's just the nature of the beast I guess.

With Mearls saying you can run the adventure how you want (only guideline being the treasure you hand out) are you more likely to run a game? Sounds like could even house rule stuff as long as you are upfront about it.

Treasure is the only thing to worry about and the recording of who is playing

Sacrosanct said:

And from what I can gather, that's making it hard to find enough DMs

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No harder than usual. Organized play has been in place since 1987 (Living City) and constantly running programms for almost 30 years now.

It's just in general harder to find DMs than players, just like in WoW groups were always looking for tanks and healers while the unneeded DDs were piling (at least until 2009 when I stopped, maybe they found a way to change that since then)