Warmaster Horus
Explorer
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...
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?
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...
- Number of Players is capped at 3 + 1 DM (minimum table size).
- The game is run at Very Hard difficulty.
- Encourage players to come and plan as a team.
- 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?