D&D Adventurers League Open Call for Designers

Have some great ideas for adventures? "Want to hear all the great stories your friends will tell about the time they played that amazing adventure you designed for the D&D Adventurers League? Then take the first step towards being a D&D Adventurer’s League adventure designer! Check out the instructions in the Open Call for Adventure Designers and send your submission to Resource Manager, Bill Benham at submissions@dndadventurersleague.org. We will be accepting submissions for this open call until February 28th."

Only 8 days left, but still plenty of time to get your entries in! You do not have to have publishing credits, but it helps! More details here. It doesn't say how much it pays, but be sure to read What's A Freelancer RPG Writer Worth? before you apply!

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[DM Howard]

For small stores, this can be difficult. If you haven't run any events in your store and you find 6 people who want to run Expeditions then there is pretty much no way to get Core level without Magic.

Almost every store I know of in my area got their Core status by running Magic tournaments. Normally getting 12 players in one Magic event is easy. Not so much with D&D.

I'm not saying it's impossible but having a weekly Magic tournament for a month can almost single handedly make all the requirements. Without that, you need to run Encounters and manage to get 5 tables worth of Encounters players (30 unique players) in order to qualify for Expeditions adventures. I know our Core store has about 7 unique people showing up for Expeditions on a weekly basis. If not for Magic, they'd lose their status.

Indeed. I can see I really didn't say the right thing in my post. It is pretty hard in my area to get that many D&D players together at one time to run Encounters. People seem to want to play Expeditions, but it's a catch 22 kind of situation. Therefore Magic would be our only qualifying grace, but I store doesn't do Magic at all really. So all that said, in practice, we are left out in the cold.

 

[MerricB]

Indeed. I can see I really didn't say the right thing in my post. It is pretty hard in my area to get that many D&D players together at one time to run Encounters. People seem to want to play Expeditions, but it's a catch 22 kind of situation. Therefore Magic would be our only qualifying grace, but I store doesn't do Magic at all really. So all that said, in practice, we are left out in the cold.

Which is unfortunate. I think there are a few changes coming up in the next few months as to how things are organised. I'm not 100% sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if access to Encounters also gives you access to the Expeditions adventures, despite what you can schedule.

I'll ping a couple of my contacts in the League and see if I can get some clarification and help.

Cheers!

 

[DM Howard]

Which is unfortunate. I think there are a few changes coming up in the next few months as to how things are organised. I'm not 100% sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if access to Encounters also gives you access to the Expeditions adventures, despite what you can schedule.

I'll ping a couple of my contacts in the League and see if I can get some clarification and help.

Cheers!

I appreciate the interest/help. I've contacted Wizard's Customer support over the issue and they, in essence, said "Well you can do D&D Encounters, otherwise your store needs to upgrade."

 

[MerricB]

BTW, "D&D Encounters" looks like it is broadening to be "Any D&D AL play on a Wednesday". I don't know if that will end up giving access to the Expeditions, but if you can play on a Wednesday, you could run Lost Mine of Phandelver, Hoard of the Dragon Queen or (soon) Princes of the Apocalypse and have it count.

Does anyone know if D&D Casual can be booked by a Gateway store? (Those three products are legal there as well, and count as D&D AL play).

Here's the Facebook page for the D&D AL - https://www.facebook.com/groups/adventurersleague/ - it sees a lot of traffic from the admins.

Cheers!

 

[Lee Singleton]

I appreciate the interest/help. I've contacted Wizard's Customer support over the issue and they, in essence, said "Well you can do D&D Encounters, otherwise your store needs to upgrade."

If you store has any kind of play space it really is easy to get past that first hurdle and become a core store. There are a bunch of things they can do with both Magic and D&D to help reach those goals which WILL benefit the store in the long run. If they want to chat to another store owner for some potential ideas, feel free to send my way


(Lee Singleton/ Owner Gamerz Nexus)

 

[Mirtek]

Weren't you supposed to able to run AL if all you had was a public venue (such as a library or school) without need to have a store backing you? Or has this been never implemented

 

[bmfrosty]

Weren't you supposed to able to run AL if all you had was a public venue (such as a library or school) without need to have a store backing you? Or has this been never implemented

I'm interested in this as well as I'm trying to put together an after work group for PotA.

 

[pedr]

Weren't you supposed to able to run AL if all you had was a public venue (such as a library or school) without need to have a store backing you? Or has this been never implemented

Yes, any club/group that plays in public can get in touch with WotC and request access to the Expeditions adventures. There's information in the 'Get Involved' article here: http://dndadventurersleague.org/get-involved/ (scroll down to 'How can Gaming Clubs get involved?' and follow the link there.)

What Core stores get that no-one else does is certificates for magic items which allow for trading of items between players. This is a rather minor benefit, but it is a little perk for stores and those who play at them.

Also, note that anyone anywhere can play the published D&D adventures (HotDQ, RoT, LMoP and, soon, PotA) as part of the Adventurers League without any kind of sanctioning, registration, or hoop-jumping except for following the rules in the Adventurers League Player's Guide such as using point-buy/standard array for attributes, only giving out treasure/XP listed in the adventures, logging play on log sheets, etc. So an after-work Princes of the Apocalypse game can run without WotC ever knowing about it, and characters that play it can (if logged on the log sheets) go to conventions and play Expeditions and Epics etc. More information in that Get Involved article.

 

[Raddu]

For those of you still thinking about applying for the Open Call for Adventure Designers, but curious about how the actual process of adventure design looks, please read Greg Marks' great article about just that process.

http://dndadventurersleague.org/2014/08/dispelling-shadows/

 

[Jester David]

Here are the requirements:

Report at least 4 events
Have at least 30 unique players in your reported events, combined
Run and report a single event with at least 12 players
Introduce at least 6 new players to WPN events
Maintain a delinquency rate of less than 20 percent

That's it. You don't need Magic. Not that hard really.

This must be some new definition of "not that hard" that I'm unaware of. You need a single event with 12 players. That's two tables of 6, with 5 players and a GM. And a player base of 30 people.
That's fairly high. My FLGS has been running PFS for almost a year and the playerbase is in the mid-teens. And the delinquency rate is high since people come and go frequently.

Ironically, D&D and gaming is pretty popular in my area. So while there are LOTS of gamers, there are also lots of stores that spread out play. I live in the 'burbs but there are two gaming stores (one dedicated, one comics/gaming) that divide up the magic/RPG community. And there are a good half-dozen other gaming stores in the city proper. One of them might work for D&D Expeditions, but the busing to the city is terrible.


It's kinda annoying to have the store miss out on magic item certs and the like.