First legal 3rd party AL material announced
skerritthegreen
Explorer
Shawn Merwin
Enevhar Aldarion
Hero
Sounds like these will be season neutral like Lost Mines, though I would assume that even if you only played these that you would still need a story origin and it's restrictions for your character to be AL-legal?
Jabborwacky
First Post
To be honest, though, the spells we did get from previous official content were a mixed bag. There were really good ones like mold earth, and then there were mechanically nonsensical ones like Gust and Immolation. Just because a particular choice helps balance a spell's power doesn't mean it makes sense. Extra care needs to be taken when introducing new options to the game. I wouldn't be surprised if that was the reason CoS was handled entirely in-house. Even SCAG has some rough edges, although nothing quite on the same level as the EE player guide.
Tyranthraxus
Explorer
Ive got a fair bit of use out of the spells of the EE Companion. ( both in non AL games and AL games). Im one of the people who does not want a return to the release schedule of previous editions (there appears to pretty much be 2 camps now.. The one that DOES want the return of the release schedule of previous editions and the one that dosnt).
Its amazing how people read a topic two different ways. Mirtek though 'Awesome new classes and spells and feats and stuff... and I thought' Awesome more Scenarios to run and maybe play in'.
Its amazing how people read a topic two different ways. Mirtek though 'Awesome new classes and spells and feats and stuff... and I thought' Awesome more Scenarios to run and maybe play in'.
skerritthegreen
Explorer
Would you care to elaborate as to your concern?
Steve_MND
First Post
If you'd like. That said, please note that these are all personal opinions, and I'm aware that I'm sure that there will be a lot of people that like all of this even if it doesn't work out as well for me personally. I tend to look towards the long-term viability of campaigns with changes like these, so hat is where a lot of my concerns stem from.
• I don't like the idea of outsourcing stuff (or pulling in external content, however you wish to refer to it). Part of what I see as a problem with some of the declared-campaign-legal elements -- such as the Hardbacks -- is that they are written and designed by people external from the needs and requirements of an OP-style campaign. In a proper OP-style campaign, I feel that the people running it need to be in complete review and have the final say-so on anything legal in it. That is why I've been disappointed with how the hardback adventures have been handled (or not handled, as the case may be) for AL, because they were never written with the intent of being played in an OP campaign system, but rather as home-campaign sourcebooks. AL has shown in the past that they don't even have full access to stuff relating to the mods themselves that THEY provide, and a lot of that stuff has to meander it's way through the WotC brass, and even then, they don't have control over what is or is not changed, just 'suggestions' for much of it.
I don't like that fracturing within the campaign itself, and am thus somewhat skeptical of adding another even farther-removed party to provide more declared-campaign-legal elements.
• While I'm sure they are all personally nice folks, my experiences with Baldman's at last year's GenCon has left a sour taste in my mouth, and thusly I am somewhat skeptical of their ability to handle something like this. What other scenarios, modules, hardbacks, etc., have they written for organized play campaigns? Their poor review procedures/choice of many judges and apparent lack of large-scale organizational skills at GenCon makes me leery of expecting different results from them in this regard.
• There has been, IMHO, a gradual eroding of "organized" in the AL "Organized Play" as the seasons progress, and this just seems to me to be further extending that lack of focus in the campaign. Despite AL originally being set around the Moonsea, as time goes on, the AL campaign seems to be splintering away from a cohesive Moonsea campaign, and instead venturing into a multiheaded beast that dives head-first into whatever new product is out from WotC this quarter. Which was fine when it was different elements of the Realms (or setting-neutral elements), but as new Seasons occur fully in Ravenloft, etc., I see that fracturing continuing as time goes on, and making it harder to maintain any sense of internal consistency or continuity. I also realize that WotC itself sees Organized Play as just another means of revenue and marketing exposure, and has been viewed as such since they took over and dismantled the RPGA, so while this isn't unexpected, it was still not something worthy of my anticipation.
If the AL campaign wishes to split up into multiple, seperate unrelated campaigns, that's fine. But if that's the case, it should do so and drop the pretense of being a single cohesive campaign, and instead, formally make Adventurer's League an umbrella organization -- like the old RPGA -- and then have separate, distinct campaigns running underneath it. Many elements of 'storyline of the week' settings, such as Madness in the Underdark season, only really work well if they are part of a particular campaign's background from the beginning, and work less effectively -- if at all -- when thrust onto a setting mid-stream... and then even less effectively when at the end of their six-month run, they are inexplicably removed, just because the character is playing a different season's module now. The idea that a character can see some aberration in the Underdark in one mod, and be fine and dandy with it, and then seeing the same type of aberration in the Underdark in a mod next week only to suffer a complete mental breakdown, and then seeing the same aberration in the Underdark in the week after that and is perfectly fine with it again, is awkward at best. Adding more and continued disparate elements like this as time goes on will just exacerbate the issue for some.
Makes me wonder exactly what hoops AL will try and leap through when WotC eventually comes out with a 5th edition Athas sourcebook, and we have to figure out a half-hearted way of tying the refugees of Phlan and such into THAT. Because we know that sourcebook, and others, are out there somewhere in the pipeline.
So yeah, in general, I'm not excited about this announcement, altho, as I said, I'm willing to see what may come of it as we get more information down the line. But with the above issues (and coupled with the rather embarrassing first foray into the paid world of modules with Suits of the Mists on DMsLeague), I'm not exactly optimistic as yet.
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